Medical / Health Related Sleuths of the Origin and Cause of a Cholera Epidemic in London in the 1800s.

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	• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the ... Steven Johnson Riverhead Trade, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 100 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Clever story marred by trendy theorizing

It's almost superfluous for me to review Ghost Map, a best-seller with its own webpage and Wikipedia article. So I will be brief. Steven Johnson is clever writer, a young man whose thought provoking story of the London cholera epidemic of 1854 contains a number of profitable ironies and digressions.

The weakness of the book--which no doubt many enthusiasts regard as a strength--is that Johnson is so consumed with communicating Big Ideas that the narrative peters out before the end of the volume, leaving behind a dusting of trendy theories that can make such works successful in the short run and quickly dated thereafter.

For example, Johnson considers one of the lessons of the ghost map story to be the demonstration that there is no moral component to disease. Yet today things "illegal, immoral and fattening" are more-than-ever suspect causes of premature death. Even Johnson's bête noir, the miasmic theory, has made something of a comeback with increased concern about air pollution. Ironically, Johnson's story, which the Chicago Tribune has called "the triumph of reason and evidence over superstition and theory," concludes with an attempt to enshrine its own superstitions and theories.

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Medical / Health Related Sleuths of the Origin and Cause of a Cholera Epidemic in London in the 1800s.

This book is an excellent and detailed look into the work of a few men who worked to try to solve the cause of a cholera outbreak in London.

It shows how the principal investigator used logic and reasoning and investigation skills to try to solve the mystery of what was causing the outbreak. It also goes into competing theories and theorists and the ultimate resolution of the cause of it.

The book is on balance an excellent one. I recommend it to anyone interested in medical and public health investigations, or in science, reasoning, and problem solving.

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One of the most interesting books that I have read in a long time

In the summer of 1854, the Soho neighborhood of London was struck by a devastating outbreak of Cholera. Public officials and medical experts, who were stuck in the conventional wisdom that disease was caused by harmful "miasmas," looked in all the wrong places for the cause of the epidemic. But, there was one man who challenged the consensus of scientists and turned the entire understanding of diseases on its head - Dr. John Snow. This is the story of one man's bravery in using his brain, and letting the facts speak for themselves, even when those in power didn't want to hear it.

I must say that this is one of the most interesting books that I have read in a long time. The author does an excellent job of bringing that long-ago era back to life for the reader. I think that he did an excellent job of telling the story of Dr. Snow and the epidemic in an interesting way, avoiding the temptation to write the narrative in a dull, academic manner.

Plus, I was so intrigued by how history repeats itself over and over again. Could it happen again where a "consensus of scientists" can be used to trump meaningful, unbiased inquiry? Oh yeah!

This is a great book, one that I think will interest anyone interested in diseases and history, or indeed anyone who likes a good story. I loved this book, and no not hesitate to give it my highest recommendations!

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Can We See the Actual Map?

Steven Johnson's book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of how a doctor, John Snow, and a local minister, Henry Whitehead, worked together to combat an outbreak of cholera in their London neighborhood. They did so by conducting on the spot investigation which allowed them to demonstrate that the cholera was being transmitted through the water supply at the Broad Street pump. This demonstration was illustrated through the famous "ghost map" that showed the cluster of illness around the pump which, in turn, famously, led to the removal of the pump handle to combat the outbreak.

Mr. Johnson does a fair job of telling this story. The strength of his telling lies in how he reminds us how far our understanding of disease has come in the past couple centuries. In an era where disease is so much better controlled through hygiene and treatment, it is so easy to forget how diseases like cholera, plague and smallpox would periodically devastate populations--diseases that are now essentially unknown in the developed world.

Yet, in the summer of 1854, the best medical authorities still believed that cholera was an effect of "miasma," the inhalation of foul odors carried through the air. Scientific rigor was becoming part of medicine by this time, however, and Dr. Snow had hypothesized some years before this outbreak that cholera was carried in the water supply. What he was lacking was proof, which the outbreak of 1854 gave him the opportunity to try to supply. And supply his proof he did, despite the fact that it would be some time before his conclusions were accepted even in the face of very convincing evidence, like the "ghost map."

Mr. Johnson relates these pieces of the story very well. What he does less well is bring these people vividly to life. Only Dr. Snow really seems to be fully three-dimensional in Johnson's story. Whitehead, Farr, Chadwick and others flit around the edges of this story like so many ghosts and never seem to be full-bodied people. It was also disappointing that, despite the title, we are not provided with a picture or color reproduction of this revolutionary map. Being able to examine the actual map would have been a nice addition to the text.

Still, there is much of value here. Despite some bells and whistles that would have added energy to the prose, the story of disease and science takes center stage in this book. It is a nice reminder of the good science can do and the struggle that scientists often have to undergo to have new ideas break through.

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