The Ghost Map

Author Steven Johnson takes us on a 10-minute tour ofThe Ghost Map, his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society.

 

"London was this city of 2.5 million people, and it was the largest city on the face of the planet at that point. But it was also the largest city that had ever been built...............It was an amazingly smelly city. Not just because of the cesspools, but also the sheer number of livestock in the city would shock people. Not just the horses, but people had cows in their attics that they would use for milk, that they would hoist up there and keep them in the attic until literally their milk ran out and they died, and then they would drag them off to the bone boilers down the street.