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

            The Ghost Map builds up to the inevitability of a cholera outbreak in Britain, detailing chronically unsanitary conditions, along side outbreaks in other parts of the world prior to 1831, providing the British with a false sense of superiority. Although the V. cholerae bacteria is ancient, an outbreak of cholera within the last two hundred years still managed to puzzle one of the world’s leading superpowers. Disease does not opportunistically prey on the politically, nor economically weak, but rather on populations that hold the social determinants of poor public health. Some determinants mentioned in The Ghost Map include lack of waste disposal systems, overcrowding among the living quarters as well as the deceased, and contamination of water systems, whether aware or unaware of its impurities. Although there is an ample amount of information on accounts of infection and lives and deaths, some of the physical and emotional torment that cholera caused, Johnson admits to require imagination (p. 32).
It may seem very obvious today that if we are quickly losing water, the best option is to rehydrate. Given Cholera’s quick and detrimental effects, however, it is easy to understand why doctors and scientists at the time would consider only complicated medications and solutions to a mysterious disease.

Reflection Questions:
Had foul smells and cramped quarters been a norm in 19^th century Britain?  When did the public realize/become educated that their living conditions were increasing their susceptibility to disease?

Pricila Castillo

This story is disgusting, and I mean that in the best way possible. This story is absolutely repulsive. The disease itself is revolting in nature and the history of the decimation it caused is harrowing. And I think that’s why it’s so important that we’re reading about it and learning about it. Like the reading says, epidemics are some of the most influential eventualities that can occur in human history; epidemics, in fact, change history altogether. The modern epidemic HIV, while most certainly widespread and dangerous, does not appear to be on the level of total hopeless destruction that this reading makes out cholera to be, even though sex is as natural and as common a human function as defecation. While this definitely has to do with how medical practice has evolved over time and how we’ve developed medications and a greater understanding of how the science of our bodies works, I think it also has to do with hygenic practices that we’ve learned over time.

That’s why it’s so important that this story is so disgusting, because to be honest, there is no excuse for this.

When refuse is such a commonality that people can be hired to pick it up and sell it and make a living doing so, there is a problem that must be corrected. When you think it’s fair practice to throw a baby’s vomit and stools into a pool of water at the front of the house, when the access to water in the neighborhood is already so poor to begin with, there is a problem. The apparent lack of hygenic common sense that existed back then is appalling to read about. Granted, they didn’t have the filtration systems that they should have, but this was the height of industrialization. Was the lack of filtration because the technology didn’t exist, or because no one thought it was necessary? If the latter, then perhaps I’m spoiled by modern hygiene, but I can’t imagine that not a single person in London looked at the cesspool festering in front of their house and said “It probably doesn’t have to be this way.”

This is why I’m worried about John Snow’s efforts. While it’s important to study cholera from a medical aspect and understand just how it’s affecting the body and just how it’s actually getting into people’s bodies, once Snow finds that information, what will he be able to do to prevent its spread? A disease as malign and widespread as cholera requires a complete upheaval in the way that water is accessed in the city. The systems they had at the time were unsustainable, for the obvious reason that their water supplies were breeding grounds for infectious bacteria. Hopefully the community at large abandons their skepticism about John Snow’s hypotheses and those who have the power to take action do so.

Written by James McKenzie