The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World in Oly Reads

Nov 15, 2008 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction

London in the 1800s was utterly disgusting. You cram two million people and sundry livestock into one Victorian city, add stinky professions such as tanners and renderers, and then put them all on top of all the crap two million people produce, and no sewage system to put it in, it's going to stink. And stink powerfully.
Clearly, something had to be done. Unfortunately, the leaders of the city picked the wrong thing to do. They decided to clean up the city by funneling all the waste into the Tham London in the 1800s was utterly disgusting. You cram two million people and sundry livestock into one Victorian city, add stinky professions such as tanners and renderers, and then put them all on top of all the crap two million people produce, and no sewage system to put it in, it's going to stink. And stink powerfully.
Clearly, something had to be done. Unfortunately, the leaders of the city picked the wrong thing to do. They decided to clean up the city by funneling all the waste into the Thames, which, by the way, was the source of drinking water for much of the city. See a problem?
The Thames went from being a clean river full of salmon and other fish, to a stinking cesspool of murky water in about 20 years.
At the same time, diseases such as cholera were spreading more quickly, thanks to improvements in transportation. London was perfectly set up to have an outbreak - it was just a matter of time.
And when the outbreak hit, jumping the channel from Hamburg to London in 1853, it hit hard and fast. So hard that even though they couldn't see the cholera bacteria yet, they could see its footprints through the ferocity of the attack. It became possible to trace the source of the disease - if you bothered to look, and didn't just blame it on the stink, or miasma, which was what the leading authorities of the time did.
It was up to an iconoclastic doctor and a local clergyman, both of whom were from the neighborhood struck by the cholera outbreak, to study the patterns of who got sick and who didn't, and map it, to uncover the true source.
Their efforts were so conclusive and irrefutable that it couldn't be pooh-poohed by the miasmatists, and it eventually led to new sewer system being installed throughout London. The principals of their methods - applying scientific principals to carefully gathered data, and mapping it out, instead of falling back on superstition and assumption - are still being used today.

The tale of the outbreak and the investigators was horrifying and fascinating to read about, and the first part of the book went quickly. But when the author started to draw conclusions, he didn't know when to stop. Again and again, the reader was informed of the virtues of applying local knowledge in scientific ways.
And then, after drilling that into the readers' heads, the author then switched to speculation about possible outbreaks in the future. And not just from disease, but also from terrorist attacks and nuclear bombs. I guess because the focus is not really on cholera here, but on how population density makes it possible for both disease and for bombs to kill way more people at once.
But at the same time, we're told, cities are GOOD, because of the efficient ways energy is used in them. People need less energy to heat and cool their homes, to get to and from work, etc.
Things at the end of this book just got a little scattered in focus, and repetitious. I alternated between being bored and intrigued. I could tell the author had done a lot of research on the cholera outbreak, but not spent as much time deciding which conclusion he wanted to draw from it - so he included every thought he'd had about it.

Worth a read, this book really made me grateful for the modern plumbing and sewage systems I have access to. ...more

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Nov 25, 2014 Ryan rated it really liked it

The most fascinating book on cholera I have ever read...the only book on cholera I have ever read actually. It was a great tale of the outbreak of cholera in London in the mid 19th century, and what scientists and social advocates did to contain it.

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Nov 23, 2012 Renée Davis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biology, medicine

As was promised, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The story of the London cholera outbreak in the mid 19th-century is fascinating on its own--the retirement of miasma theory, new principles of public health and urban development. But Johnson's storytelling amplifies its lessons.

"Snow’s theory was like a ladder; each individual rung was impressive enough, but the power of it lay in ascending from bottom to fop, from the membrane of the small intestine all the way up to the city itself."

"The Broa ...more

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