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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Riverhead Trade

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Average customer rating: 4 stars

fascinating history

This is a fascinating story of how the cholera outbreak in 19th century London was finally attributed not to the air and smells but to water taken from a specific pump. Johnson has done incredible research and woven the story in a brilliant manner. The only reason I can't give it one more star is because the last 75 pages or so contain preachy and politicized opinions about our modern ills which really have little to do with the mysteries of disease. A good editor would have summarized this or cut it all together.

Great Teaching Book!

In my opinion, the book isn't "just" about cholera or the ways in which Dr. Snow found its causes. Rather, it's a fascinating and compelling story about the ways in which we produce social knowledge. That's the reason I always assign it in my social science research methods class. Essentially, it allows students to compare Theory A and Theory B and to discuss what is empirically, methodologically and socially and culturally compelling or attractive about each theory. Then, I ask them to think about what sorts of biases researchers and citizens might have had in Victorian England, and how that might have affected the decision to prefer one theory or another. It forces the reader to think about his or her own cultural and social biases in terms of the deserving and the undeserving poor, how we "know" what we know and how we decide what is and is not a problem in society. It's also great for talking about how you falsify a theory, how you identify control groups, and of course, that perennial battle axe, correlation vs. causality.

It does all that and yet the story is suspenseful and keeps you reading. I've taught the book three times now and never get tired of teaching it. Even when I only assign excerpts formthe book, students usually come up to me later and tell me they read the whole thing anyway -- just because it was such a compelling story and they wanted to find out how it ended. Good stuff!

Highly Relevant and Entertaining

Given the recent outbreak of swine flu and the national reaction to the virus's spread The Ghost Map seemed especially appropriate to add to my reading list. What I discovered is an absolute gem of a read that maintains the tension and pacing of fiction writing yet does not sacrifice the solid scholarship and detail of a good history text. The story follows Dr. John Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead and their roles in the cholera outbreak of 1853-4 in London. Johnson makes a strong case for the his thesis that each man's individual contributions during the outbreak had much greater, long-term effects on modern medicine and epidemiology.
The only criticism I have is that the final chapter and the Afterword seem so stylistically different than the rest of the book. While the majority of the book reads like a novel the last fifty or so pages feel much more like an essay or research paper. Johnson uses this last part of the text to tie in the London outbreak and its after effects to the current day and modern urban life. When I got to this part in the text there was a mental changing of gears required for the reader that I felt could have been avoided by a writer of Johnson's caliber.
All that aside, this book is a wonderful, quick read and should maintain its relevance and allure for the intelligent reader for years to come. Highly recommended.

Vivid descriptions... but few maps!

I am a reader of non fiction only if it tells a good story with lots of interesting facts included. This is exactly what the Ghost Map does.

This is the story of science in Victorian times. It's also the story of urbanization and plague. It's also the story of how a man who perseveres can really change the world.

The author's depiction of Cholera from the scientific perspective, is fantastic. Though I'm not a biologist, I understand how this disease works, how it vectors, and how it only really breaks out under certain conditions. What really got me, though, was his description of the person dying of cholera. The person dies but is completely aware. His body is dying but his mind is sharp. It has to be a hideous death.

These kind of thoughts were foremost for me while I was reading this book. It was evocative and I was quite empathetic. When it came to the layout of the arguments that John Snow made when he was trying to end the Cholera outbreak near London's Golden Square, I really wish the book had contained more diagrams. The pictures of the principle players were nice, and the one depiction of Snow's Broad Street Outbreak map is good, but I wish there had been more. Instead of just describing what was there and what is there, why not throw some illustrations in? A picture would have been worth many many words.

Anyhow, I did enjoy the book and feel quite enlightened. And frightened of cholera.

(*)>

Fallacious Reasoning Can Be Deadly

Cholera devastates cities, a lethal enemy that has killed countless millions. The Ghost Map takes us to 1854 when a cholera epidemic ravaged London's Soho district, claiming more than six hundred lives. The death toll would certainly have been higher had not many anxious citizens fled.

The dominant epidemiological paradigm of the day designated cholera an airborne disease, the product of foul air associated with overflowing cesspools and unsanitary living conditions. For several years prior to the outbreak, Dr. John Snow, a renown anesthesiologist, suspected the airborne theory was wrong. When the fatalities in Soho began to multiply, he courageously entered the area to test an alternative explanation. By a process of rigorous neighborhood interviews, he developed a map of the district that showed where fatalities occurred (see the map below), visually demonstrating a pattern that linked the disease to a water pump on Broad Street.

Many members of the medical establishment were critical, even hostile, to Snow's waterborne theory. At first, Snow found no support from the Rev. Henry Whitehead, an Anglican clergyman who indefatigably ministered to the sick and dying, while at the same time, undertaking his own investigations into the causes of the disease. As he ministered to afflicted families, he determined that most, if not all, had drunk from the Broad Street pump. His careful study of Snow's research and his own intimate knowledge of the neighborhood led him to embrace the waterborne theory, and, through an exhaustive study of death records, determine the index case of the outbreak.

The efforts of Snow and Whitehead were sufficient to persuade the local council to remove the pump.

Over a period of years the entire medical and public health establishment were won over to Snow's theory, and through one of the remarkable engineering feats of history, London constructed a sewer system, which along with the simple precaution of boiling suspect water, brought an end to cholera epidemics in the city.

Problem solvers will love this book. Refusing to submit to the reigning cholera model, two men fought not only the disease but public health officials who were nearly blind to contrary evidence. Correlation was often confused with causation. For example, it was argued that cholera seldom strikes people living on a hill because the air is cleaner at higher altitudes. In fact, people on hillsides were less likely to frequent water supplies contaminated by human waste. At one point, convinced that cholera was spread by the bad air emerging from cesspools, the city shut down thousands of cesspools, and arranged a disposal system that dumped human waste directly into the Thames River, London's source of drinking water. The author points out that modern bio-terrorists could not have concocted a more efficient plan for spreading the disease.

The book reminds me how easy it is to examine a problem, collect facts, and then assign causation where it doesn't belong. The outcome of fallacious reasoning can be costly, even deadly.