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.
