2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

Probably because I have never discussed the idea of public health in any college classes before, I had no idea what that term included. From the readings we were assigned this week, I was struck by the amount of factors that fall under the category of public health- politics, economics and education all play a role, as made clear in chapter 3. It is incredible to think of all of the things that affect our individual and collective health as opposed to thinking of disease as a more random idea that affects whoever it happens to affect. In addition to feeling enlightened about the meaning of public health, the chapters we had to read made me feel like the issue is far bigger than I had imagined, involving so many different compartments of society, and therefore more difficult to rectify. One particular passage in chapter 3 caught my attention in regards to this idea was on page 38:

“Every sector of government and society has the potential to affect health and health equity…it is particularly important that policies are coherent, that is, that one policy (or set of policies) does not work against the other. For example, a recent proposal in the United Kingdom to increase the speed limit on motorways from 70 miles per hour to 80 miles per hour, if enacted, might increase transportation efficiency but would increase both carbon dioxide emissions and the risk of road deaths.”

This paragraph highlights the difficulties of public health, that because so many branches of society are involved, they must be careful not to step on each other’s toes. We have to always approach an issue with an idea of the effects a solution could possibly have on all sectors of our society.

Like many of my classmates have mentioned, I found the last chapters of The Ghost Map to be just as interesting as the first, and I was excited to draw connections between some of the ideas Johnson brought up and some of the conversations we have had in class. What first came to mind was the idea of social prejudice, an incredibly large stumbling block in the way of real scientific answers in both the case of the London cholera epidemic and the HIV/AIDS one today. It is truly frightening to note that even in this era, with all of our technological advances and scientific research, prejudice can still cloud and warp our rationality.

But another part of the reading I found interesting and relatable in terms of our class was Johnson’s statement on page 125: “So often what is lacking in many of these explanations and prescriptions is some measure of humility, some sense that the theory being put forward is still unproven. It’s not just that the authorities of the day were wrong about miasma; it’s the tenacious, unquestioning way they went about being wrong.” I was so intrigued by this idea because I remember specifically complaining about the article we were given to read in class about a possible correlation between cholera and the environment-but my complaint was about that the writer lacked the ‘tenacious’ way of the London cholera writers. I had found the article in class to be too apprehensive when I read it. Because its authors were was too afraid to make any concrete claim, I thought, the article’s finding’s were unconvincing and even inconsequential. But after reading this passage in Johnson’s book, I began to reconsider, to appreciate the open mindedness and even humility of that article. Isn’s that method so much better, so much more conducive to the ever-changing world of scientific discovery? Our human desire for concrete answers and tangible results may cloud our judgements, so it is important to remember the dangerous tenacity and narrow-mindedness of the people Johnson mentions and always keep an open mind.

BY Rachel Tawil

Steven Johnson has, in the first four chapters of his book, Ghost Map, succeeded in crafting an intensely readable, emotional as well as informative narrative of the cholera outbreak in Victorian London. He goes into disgusting detail about the conditions of metropolitan London at that time, with its well-to-do night soil men and horrifically contaminated water supply. But what stood out to me most in these first four chapters was after the cholera epidemic began, in chapter 2: Johnson explains that in the public’s desperation for a cure, people of all backgrounds advertised in newspapers and magazines a laughable array of “remedies” that the people could purchase. I was heartbroken to read the complaint of one man that Johnson quoted and put in his book, that the lower classes weren’t getting access to these “remedies”, like castor oil, and that this social injustice was criminally unfair. How horribly ironic, that this man was complaining about lack of access to something that would do more harm than good anyway? But even worse was the frustrated editorial in Punch magazine that Johnson quoted, expressing the frustration of the people at the multitude of these “remedies”, the false hopes they provided, and the confusion doctors created by endorsing some and then refuting others: “…when one medical man’s ‘infallible medicine’ is another man’s ‘deadly poison’, and the specific of today is denounced as the fatal drug of tomorrow, we are puzzled and alarmed at the risk we run in following the doctors’ contradictory directions.” On top of all of the physical suffering cholera caused, the mental frustration, confusion and desperation the people felt in response marks this epidemic as one that is horribly depressing, yet instantly relatable.