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

Jairam Ganpat wrote this

As London expanded in the 19th century, London got very dirty very fast. Without a proper system of disposing waste, London was pushed into a time of disease and death at a time when no one could explain it.

However, just by observing the situation, it was strange that most scientist did not figure out that giving water to their patients would essentially cure them and leave them with just a bad case of diarrhea.

It’s to be noted that in much the same way that Cholera broke out mostly among the poor, HIV in a similar manner is breaking out among those with out proper resources today.

So I guess my question is if there is a precedent for disease targeting the poor and the less resourceful, why doesn’t the government act on that and work on providing resources for them. It would seem the economical thing to do since dealing with healthy citizens is a lot cheaper than dealing with the sick.

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.

BY ANNALIISA GIFFORD

Steven Johnson has written us, in these 4 chapters, a summary of the cholera epidemic in London and it’s terrifying roots. The disease was frighteningly contagious and began in the dirty systems of transportation and sewage in SoHo, London on Broad Street. It is outstanding to me that one sick child began the outbreak that we know as cholera. One person’s sickness wrought the sickness and painful deaths of thousands of others. Knowing this, I’d like to pose a few questions to the readers and those contemplating the epidemic.

Do you think a widespread epidemic like the epidemic in London could reproduce itself in the United States in present day?

How would the economy and our health care policies react to this?