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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

Worthwhile, but dry...

This book tells the story of the London doctors who discovered that cholera was spread by polluted water, rather than via noxious air as was commonly believed. It also tells how unwilling proponents of the noxious air theory were to objectively view the water-borne evidence, indeed how they openly disparaged (even attacked) the data and it's authors.

This book and others like it should be required reading for pin-headed politicians (I won't name names), although I doubt that these lessons will do them any good. For the rest of us, we should learn to not be so absolute in our judgement. History is full of examples of those whose opinions were so firmly anchored (incorrectly it turns out) they refused to see the truth in front of them.

not very good, but it's fine

the book has a large scatch on the back, but it's fine because it doesn't affect reading.

One of the most interesting books I've read this year

A friend recommended The Ghost Map, and I can see why. Steven Johnson is a writer who keeps one's interest even while he describes horrifying sanitary (or lack of) conditions in London slums in 1854 which ultimately led to a cholera epidemic and the death of hundreds of people. Two men, John Snow and Alfred Whitehorse, were ultimately responsible for tracing the outbreak to a contaminated public pump and for changing the prevailing scientific attitude from the spread of disease by miasma to water.

Water is life...and death.

We take our water in the U.S. for granted. It flows from our faucets clean. We don't have to worry about getting sick from it. But this wasn't always the case. Johnson's book is one of the best books of the original case study of epidemiology that I learned about in public health classes at the University of Pittsburgh. John Snow didn't have access to computers or phones or even public libraries to do his work for him. He had to research everything himself. He had to walk the area, and talk to the people who lived there. He had to fight against a theory that was prevalent and wrong, but seemed to make sense to everyone else.

I didn't know the whole story obviously. I didn't know about the curate, a man named Whitehead who knew all the families who became sick with cholera and who did a lot of the personal research with the people that tied the sickness to the water pump on Broad Street. This fact piqued my interest just because my maiden name is Whitehead and my family is from England. Wonder if we are related!

Johnson goes on to relate all current use of epidemiological research back to Snow's work, and he is right. His final chapter was an interesting essay on the things we need to fear now, such as bioterrorism and nuclear weapons in the hands of small and rabid groups. It's these mechanisms used within city-states that can do the most damage, and may cause human populations to flee cities. He also brings up the importance of getting global warming under control, and how cities use less in carbon footprints than sprawling suburbia does. I'll have to bring this to the attention of my meteorology and environmental classrooms...

A terrific book. Very well-written...a fast read, provoking and thoughtful.

Fascinating read...scientific mystery story

The Ghost Map reads like a detective story. Johnson tells the story of Dr. John Snow and his unrelenting quest to challenge the dominant theory of disease in 19th Century England. Leading scientists of the time were blinded by their devotion to the theory of miasma, or the theory of airborne causes of disease. As Johnson so engagingly documents this blindness led to misguided public health policy that actually exacerbated the Cholera outbreaks that plagued 19th Century cities. Readers interested in history, science and just a well-told story will be gripped by this book. Highly recommended.