(by Cameron M-W)
The cholera outbreak described in The Ghost Map, in addition to more recent and ongoing health crises like HIV/AIDS, illustrates the role of hierarchical power structures in determining the large-scale path of disease. People at the bottom of a social structure are at the highest risk of contracting disease, developing health problems, and dying prematurely because social status determines who gets priority in prevention and treatment efforts (or if any prevention or treatment efforts even occur).
In this instance, the tenants of the Broad Street/Golden Square neighborhood were marginalized due to their low class status. Accordingly, their living conditions (i.e. overflowing cesspools) led to a cholera outbreak because the safety and comfort of this population were not priorities for people who held the power to affect them. The cholera outbreak wasn’t even reported in newspapers for four days. I see parallels to the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis that we discussed in class last week: though there could not have been any prevention efforts for a disease no one knew existed at the time, the first cases of “junkie pneumonia” went unreported because of injection drug users’ low social status and the related lack of concern about their deaths.
