As I read the first three chapters of The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, I was pleased with Johnson’s narrative, but disappointed to see how the novel did not relate to the “modern world.” That being said, it was only the first three chapters so it is too early to go into the implications of what Dr. John Snow accomplished. I am amazed at how Johnson was able to convey the cholera outbreak in an engaging narrative. He also touched upon the social class and the society of 1854 London through his use of anecdotes. Specifically, in pages 36-39, he explains the effects of cholera in laypeople’s terms. Instead of giving data, Johnson would merely use anecdotes get his point across. He brought up the topic of disinformation where the London Times would have advertisements for the “cures” for chorea from fraudsters.

Something that I wondered as I read this was how strangely it felt reading someone’s documentation of a disease outbreak from the 19^th century in the 21^st century. It is akin to reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the present day. If The Ghost Map were written in the late 19^th century, it would be a very powerful narrative that speaks about the importance of clean water, similar to Carson’s message about how reliance on pesticides is a bad thing, but without the backlash from Silent Spring. The actions of Dr. Snow and how he would record the households that had cholera and the sampling of the water pumps from different locations can be compared to Carson’s findings about the hazards of DDT and other chemicals. The part that makes this awkward was that these events took place a while ago and because the reader is looking at the events in hindsight, it can make the readers wonder why such simple truths were so hard to find out. A few people in this class expressed disbelief that it was so hard to figure out the cure to cholera was clean water and I think it is because we are reading this in hindsight and with that, I will end on this note: Do you think reading about something new to us such as the discovery and invention of smartphones and cloud storage right now would be as interesting to our future generations a few hundred years from now where such technology will probably be extremely taken for granted or obsolete as it is to us?

While reading these chapters, I was more interested in why it took so long to find a real cure for cholera than I was in the process of determining the cause of its spread.  Yes, as a Pre-Med student, I was intrigued by how the disease gave seemingly contradictory facts about how it is contracted.  How can an entire area be affected save a few random houses?  However, I was wondering why no one thought of giving water to someone who is clearly dehydrated.  Was it because there was cholera in the water supply, therefore it didn’t help?  Or was it because people believed that if there was “bad blood” it should be removed, and the same idea translated into “removing diarrhea”?  How did the “Waterstones” daughter recover from cholera when the rest of her family did not?

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?

I guess !’ll go first!

“Most world historic events-great military battles, political revolutions-are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicled and dissected for decades of centuries to come. But epidemics create a kind of history from below; they can be world changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity. And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it’s often too late because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying.” (Johnson, 55)

This breathtaking paragraph from chapter 2 page 55 (your page number may be different, Im reading this as an eBook) stopped me in my tracks. This claim is bold, but after a few hours of thought it seems undoubtably true. Which leads me to my question.

Does the fact that the “common person” living through an epidemic is unaware or uncaring of their historical implications show that acts of heroism or innovation were truly for the benefit of humanity as opposed to the development of an individual’s success or legacy?

-John

P.S. Every time the term “rice water” is used I gag a little bit.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you all think about the first few chapters. i know it starts with a detailed discussion of the social organization of sewage, but given how cholera spreads that’s actually important.