The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Author:Steven Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780141915777
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-12-31T16:00:00+00:00


IT IS POSSIBLE SNOW’S INTENSE ROUND OF QUESTIONING may have, on its own, diminished the spread of the epidemic. We know from Snow’s own account that he spoke with hundreds of people in the neighborhood over the course of the week, and that most of those conversations involved questions about the Broad Street pump. What we don’t know is whether Snow betrayed his theory of the cholera’s source in those conversations. Were they both interviews and warnings? Snow was a physician, after all, and the poor, frightened inhabitants of Soho were his patients. If he believed that the pump was spreading fatal disease, it seems unlikely that he would have kept that information to himself. Would a hundred separate warnings from an esteemed physician be enough to suppress the neighborhood’s taste for Broad Street water? The most dramatic drop in deaths had occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday—two days after Snow began exploring the neighborhood. Perhaps fewer people were dying because some portion of the population had heard a rumor that the pump was to blame.

But if the epidemic was in decline, it was still at terrifying levels by any normal standard. Snow knew from his investigative rounds that at least a dozen new deaths had occurred that Wednesday—ten times the normal rate for the neighborhood. Given the exodus of the population, it was possible that the plague was still every bit as deadly, on a per capita basis. He knew his statistical account of the outbreak would be a convincing argument for his waterborne theory, particularly when it was accompanied by the final results from his South London waterworks study. His monograph on cholera would have to be revised, new articles submitted to The Lancet and the London Medical Gazette. But in the short term, there was a more pressing matter at hand. People were still dying in his neighborhood, and his survey of the outbreak clearly revealed the culprit.



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