During the first few chapters of The Ghost Map, I was wondering what Whitehead’s role was.  I thought it was interesting how Whitehead went from becoming greatly opposed to Snow’s theory to being the most influential propagator of the theory.  The question “What if Whitehead were not convinced by Snow’s argument?” has a lot of scary possible answers.  As the epidemic was just starting to disappear, Sarah Lewis was about to restart the epidemic when her husband died.  Who knows how long the disaster would have lasted?

While Whitehead answered most of the questions left, I still don’t know how drinking more water from the Broad Street pump helped cure people.  It seems counterintuitive.  There are still bacteria in the water.  While there was less over time, drinking the water would add more germs into your body.

I thought it was interesting how the miasmists were blinded by an idea.  I am interested in psychology, so I think it is interesting how people will create circular arguments when they don’t want to be wrong.

This whole book generally reminds me of how there is the theory that cell phones can cause brain cancer.  My mother believes that the theory is true, but I learned in my physics class that it is not.  In order to cause cancer, the waves given off by the cell phone must have a certain amount of energy to break the chemical bonds in DNA.  The RF waves given off by cell phones don’t have enough energy to do that.  To this day, there isn’t a definite answer, so people are left trying to make sense of what they hear.  Like, “is coffee good for you or bad?”  Why are there always so many contradicting stories out there?