Hello. I'm Catherine Weller and this is The Open Book.

This week's selection is The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson.

In 1851 London had a population of 2.4 million people in the space of ninety square miles. Such density is difficult for any city to manage, especially one that has no real sanitary infrastructure. And so cholera enters the picture. To biologically succeed, cholera needs people to be close together in circumstances that cause them to consume food or liquids contaminated by the waste of their fellows. Nineteenth century London fit the bill perfectly. In the 1830's, forties, and fifties cholera killed thousands of men women and children. Entire families died in their one-room lodgings, children expiring next to the corpses of their parents. Londoners were horrified and frightened by the epidemics. Attempts at controls were misguided and inefficacious at best; biggoted and narrow minded at worst.

Dr. John Snow would have been a remarkable man in any era. Johnson refers to him as a consilient thinker: Snow could view a problem from various perspectives and integrate those ideas for greater insight. This talent led Snow, already a noted pioneer in anesthesiology, to realize that miasma, or befouled air, didn't transmit cholera as most clinicians of the time believed: instead, it's taken into the digestive tract via contaminated water. His observations were ridiculed or ignored. Despite that he continued, using the fledgling science of epidmiology to prove his case. Later Dr. Snow joined forces with a former opponent, clergyman Henry Whitehead. Their considerable footwork, case studies, and the ghost map - a map snow created to show cholera casualties in each household, and their proximity to a suspect well -- finally convinced the powers that be and the pump handle of the Broad Street Well was removed. The outbreak abated. Despite their success, it would take years for Snow's theory to be recognized.

The Ghost Map isn't just a true-life medical thriller guaranteed to make you gasp with gruesome details, though it's a great one of those. It's a paean to cities; their wonders and difficulties, and an exploration of the considerations humans must make in order to live so densly, even today. Steven Johnson is a writer with proven ability to think outside the box. His 2005 book, Everything Bad is Good for You postulated, among other things, that the violent video game "Grand Theft Auto" had some benefits for young brains. It is only fitting then, that someone so able to see things from a different perspective would write a tour de force about two men who were able, despite great opposition, to see a dreadful disease differently… more clearly…. And were thus able to solve one of the great medical mysteries of the nineteenth century.

You've been listening to the Open Book on KCPW. I'm Catherine Weller.

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