Time and again we take for granted the development and progression of society, and modern science. From the opening lines of the novel, “ It is August 1854, and London is a city of Scavengers. Just the names alone read now like some kind of exotic zoological catalogue: bone pickers, rag-gatherers, pure-finders, dredgermen, mud larks, sewer hunters, dustmen, night-soil men, bunters, toshers, shoremen.”, it is clear that London has a deeply rooted social class system. The author continues to clearly delineate the horrendous “jobs” the aforementioned people perform. These hapless members of society were not only exposed to terrible “working” conditions, but also experienced an entrenched aversion during the nascence of the cholera outbreak. Many people believed that the upper class was immune to cholera, and that the “mean and bad” people were being attacked selectively. This false belief, along with many others, served as thorn in the road to discovering the true cause of the outbreak of cholera.

One of the factors that was presented by the author which had a major role in this epidemic was the gullibility of society. There were countless times in which charlatans posed quick and easy methods as the cure for cholera. Many of these “solutions,” however, proved to do more harm than good. We take for granted how far we have progressed in the medical field. As shown by the author, people didn’t know anything about medicine and were swayed by any quack. It is interesting to note that not many people were convinced at first by John Snow’s, a well known figure in the medical field, observations. It was his keen eye, along with Whitehead’s history with Soho, which helped crack the cholera epidemic. So I ask, how does it feel to live in a time period in which a gripping epidemic makes the continuation of life so uncertain?