The Ghost Map 1-55 :: Traian Dragomir

In this first part of the book, Steve Johnson describes the terrifying and miserable setting of the Victorian Age in London. It is awful how people lived by the dozen in one building and at the same time having room to grow livestock. The streets were were overwhelmed by the smell of decaying matter and human feces coming from overflowing cesspools. No wonder the slightest contamination lead to epidemics and deaths by the hundreds.

Cholera is what terrifies everybody during this time period. Baby Lewis’ contaminated fluids made their way into the sublayers of the earth from where the main pump on Broad Street got its cold, slightly carbonated water. Its reputation made everyone that lived in and around Golden Sqare acquire their water supplies there.

During the outbreak, many people had their own original theories for the cure of this disease. Few hit close to home.

Ghost Map p.57-109

In class we discussed Jonh Snow as being the Holmes like character but after further reading of Steven Johnson’s Ghost Map I believe that both John Snow and Henry Whitehead incorporate qualities that make them Holmes like characters, Whitehead is familar with local people, their occupation, and the Golden Square neighborhood. Henry Whitehead is able to transcend class barriers similarly to Sherlock Holmes. Snow uses many techniques to produce his statistical mapping of the cholera epidemic. Similar to Holmes Snow uses deductive reasoning to conclude that the cholera epidemixc is caused by an unidentified agent that is ingested directly or indirectly by victims through contact with waste matter or contaminated water. He eliminated other possible causes of the cholera epidemic until there was only one plausible explanation. Snow also uses contorl studies, which form the basis of the scientific method, which Holmes incorporates in his investigations and was a firm supporter of. He uses on the ground investigative skills and uses primary sources (i.e. citywide statistics, tables of cholera deaths) like Holmes. Even though Snow used all of these techniques he still needed Whitehead’s local investigations and “anecdotal experiences” to solve the cholera epidemic; reciprocally Whitehead needed Snow’s statistical data to solve the cholera epidemic. Snow understood “cholera couldn’t be studied in isolation, but needed to be be studied on the scale of the city”, which Whitehead was trying to do. Snow knew that “solutions wouldn’t be found under the microscope, but on the scale of the neighborhoods”. In Holmes we see that Holmes possesses both the knowledge of local investigations and statistical data and use of the scientific method. In Ghost Map these characters are split between Whitehead and Snow and both are necessary in the solving of the mystery of the cholera epidemic.  There is a presence of pseudoscience in London due in part to people were unable to find scientific explanations for the cholera epidemic and to the fast pace of gossip versus the sluggish pace of mass communication which was less reliable allowed folklore to spread. We see a battle between pseudoscience/ the amaeteur scientist and the scientific method and investigation as was present in Sherlock Holmes. 

The Ghost Map pg.1-55

The Ghost Map is an interesting book in that it tells the story of London’s cholera epidemic and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world. In some ways it is a detective story and tries to map out the spead of the cholera epidemic and its eventually realization as to the causes through medical accounts, historic accounts, personal accounts, and a mix of other sources. This novel shows that industrialization had negative effects, like The Devil in the White City did. Industrialization brought about shifts from rural life to urban life which caused too many people to be crammed into the city of London with no infrasture in place to properly dispose of this additional waste. The Great Exhibition, like the Chicago Columbian Exposition, introduced the public to new technologies, such as the water closet. But this new technology had a negative effect on the city’s sewage problem becauase it increased the tendency of cesspools to overflow. Victorian medicine wasn’t hardly a triumph of scientific methods like we see in Sherlock Holmes. During this time we see the prominence of quack cures and pseudoscientific prescriptions. This idea of pseudoscience is still presence in the Sherlock Holmes stories which occur approximately 40 years later. This prominence of quack cures served as the business model for newspaapers and magazines that is still present today. The outbreak of cholera in London and its effects led to improvements in science and medicine but would serve as the business model for newspapers, magazines, and multinational companies.