The Cholera Outbreak In Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map

Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, depicts the Cholera outbreak in London in 1854, the largest city that has been built in the world. The book shows a path towards a scientific solution. This book focuses on a doctor, John Snow, and his search for a way to stop the epidemic that was occurring. Even though Dr. Snow had discovered some theories on his own, he also had the help of a Reverend, Henry Whitehead. They are searching for a new theory on how disease spreads, but their community did not want to accept their findings. Johnson’s central argument is that in order to treat a disease, one must understand how the disease functions. While the science community did not believe Dr. Snow’s findings at the time, Johnson’s obsession with how people

could disapprove of Snow’s theory plagued him and his argument. There was a bit irony from the fact that people disapproved of Snow’s theory at first, but after many years and deaths, people finally believed Snow.
The community of London thought that a disgusting fragment is present and it was killing everyone.

Now this stench has left a scar in London’s history: “No extended description of London from that period failed to mention the stench of the city.” People in the city thought that the stench was the reason why the was murdered every three or four years. The government of course reacted by passing the Nuisances Removal and Contagious Diseases Prevention Act to empty out people’s cesspools and pour all the waste into the river, because if waste was taken out of the road then it would smell less. Consequently, the waste in the river actually influenced more outbreaks of chorea. There was only one person who believed but was turned down by authorities that the cholera was originated by the Water-John Snow. Now, surrounded by the cesspool was an extremely popular water pump where a great chunk of people would go to. With the water contaminated from the cesspool, 10% of the neighborhood died in one week, but thankfully people fled, or else it would’ve been more people who have died. John Snow headed up to the place where it all started, thinking that people will finally believe him that the cholera was in the water and not in the air. With the help of a local minister, Henry Whitehead, he found out that people who drank from the pump were getting sick, and those who were not, weren’t getting sick. And so, a map was created to demonstrate that when people were getting away from the

pump, people weren’t dying. Another outbreak of cholera arose in London 1866, and people were finally agreeing that the water was the problem, not the air. To fix the problem, the authorities began a sewer system and people started boiling their water.
Even though Dr. Snow worked on many other medical findings throughout his career, he still spent a significant time trying to figure out how infected people. Johnson details how Dr. Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead worked to find how cholera spreads its infection. Snow theorized that Cholera was a waterborne illness, meaning the illness is spread through contaminated water. Reverend Whitehead was skeptical of this claim at first, but eventually Dr. Snow convinced him otherwise. The science community was not as easily convinced, and still rejected Snow’s theories. Johnson shows how even though a valuable explanation for why this disease exists was presented, ridiculous ideas for how the disease was contracted still existed. The author wants people to understand and shows in the book that if we listen to reason, and to intelligent people like Snow’s and Whitehead’s wisdom, there wouldn’t be a dilemma. If people were to have just listened to Snow from the beginning, there wouldn’t have been many deadly outbreaks. He shows how much trouble Snow went through just to show people the problem was the water. “After his first publications at end of the 1840s had failed to persuade the medical
authorities of his waterborne theory, Snow had continued looking for evidence supporting this theory.”
Throughout his book, it is clear that Johnson agrees with Snow, and believed discovering how the disease spreads is critical to understanding the disease itself.

He is also trying to show how even unrealistic reasoning will persist in the people's ideals in how the disease infects. He questions, “How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories?” It is hard for Johnson to simply move on from the fact that Snow’s theories were not widely accepted, and due to this fact, there seems to be a bit bias towards the subject. In a way, I can connect to what he is talking about. For example, in the television show, The Office, there was an episode where Dwight Shrute is giving a lecture on fire safety, however, no one listens. Consequently, when the fire does happen, people are freaking out and don’t know how to react. Similarly, in the book, Dr. Snow was portrayed as a person who society ignored even though he was wise enough to teach London’s population. The author’s general purpose is to discuss the biology that Dr. Snow and other scientists had then, and compare it to the science that modern scientists work with. Johnson does not really have one specific audience, but he mostly addressing a scientific based

audience.
In this medical recount, Johnson does a good job with giving the details of Cholera and epidemiology, the study of diseases. Even though it is a medical book, he still shows someone sidedness throughout the book. Johnson is so caught up with how people dismiss Dr. Snow’s theory that it is hard to focus on anything else. This book makes it very clear that Johnson is concerned with the field of epidemiology, and Dr. Snow’s theories that helped advance it.