February 2012: Ghost Map (Johnson)

Post date: Feb 29, 2012 3:49:7 AM

Thanks to Patricia Ditton '64 for hosting 13 of us to discuss Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Conversation over all the good snacks in the kitchen continued in the living room circle where it centered on current politics and culture related to women and girls before Patricia graciously brought us back to the topic at hand: Mid-19th Century London and the outbreak of cholera that led Dr. John Snow and local curate Henry Whitehead to the conclusion that cholera was water-borne. It takes an epidemic to see the patterns that lead to it, and it wasn't as easy before Google maps. The persistence and acuity of Snow and Whitehead was indeed remarkable, and all agreed it was a well-told story, history at its most engaging. Where we ended up spending most of our discussion was around the subjects related to the Conclusion and Epilogue of the book, of modern-day cities, epidemics, biological warfare and prevention of outbreaks, respect for and understanding of science in current American culture. Sandy brought up a very good point that Johnson skipped entirely, which is the fact that 150 years after London's groundbreaking development of a comprehensive sewer system we are flushing perfectly clean water (a limited resource too many Americans take for granted) down the drain in our modern sewer systems. As the story focused on the contamination of water from sewage, it would have been logical that he spend some of his theorizing about the ecological and biological sustainability of modern and future cities on the subject of how we should put some of our clever scientists and engineers to the task of changing that practice and preserving our clean water for drinking. So our discussion moved to waste treatment, architecture and urban planning, leased solar panels, etc. Mary brought a print-out of the Wikipedia entry on Voronoi diagrams referred to in the text but without any examples. Dr. Snow not only brought ether and chloroform to the aid of patients having tooth extractions, surgery, or giving birth, and not only surmised the cholera was water-borne, but was able to represent data in a way that was part of the revolution of information design.

Related to the water topic was the SF faculty speaker event https://sites.google.com/site/eastbaysmithclub/club-blog/waterforachangingworldfacultyvisitinsf