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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Terrifying Epidemic -and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Riverhead Books
$26.95 Cloth (299 p.)
ISBN: 1594489254
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Reviewed by Marcia A. Lusted, Statusing

Thanks in part to what scientists learned as a result of the epidemic which this book addresses, cholera is a disease that most of us will never encounter. But in the Golden Square neighborhood of London in the summer of 1854, cholera was a familiar and dreaded disease which killed quickly and whose causes were unknown. It was only because of the work of two men, Dr. John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead, that cholera's method of transmission was ultimately discovered and the first steps were taken to prevent the frequent outbreaks that killed so many people so quickly.

The Ghost Map is one of those history books that immerses the reader in the time and place by looking at the everyday habits of the London population at the time, the physical conditions that most people lived in, and how lack of modern sanitary conditions contributed to diseases like cholera which were spread through shared and often contaminated sources of drinking water. Dr. John Snow was the creator of the "ghost map" of the title, in that he documented and mapped every incident of cholera within the Golden Square neighborhood and ultimately was able to link it to a shared water pump contaminated by nearby cesspools. Reverend Whitehead was able to use his knowledge as a trusted member of the neighborhood to trace the webs of contact that carried the disease from house to house, as well as determining the common factors that would lead to widespread mortality in one dwelling and no sickness at all in another neighboring house. These two men together would begin to solve the problem of cholera epidemics, as well as paving the way for the creation of systems to provide clean drinking water and effective sanitary disposal for cities that were now growing far beyond the capacity of the ancient systems used by its citizens.

Stevens finishes the book with conjecture about the future of cities and the ultimate effect of diseases such as the threatened avian flu, and how this disease and other like it may rage as cholera once did, but will ultimately be defeated through the use of tools such as Snow's ghost map, to show the ebb and flow of illness in a city and determine whether or not an epidemic is indeed underway. We will need to use our modern versions of the ghost map to track and identify illnesses so that we can deal with epidemics before they become large-scale killers.

The real strength of this book, however, lies in the picture it presents of London as it is becoming a modern city, and how one man's ability to track illnesses and deaths and formulate a map of cholera's effect on a neighborhood resulted in one of the great medical discoveries of the time.