The Ghost Map Essay

The Ghost Map, written by Steven Johnson, follows two researchers, John Snow and Henry Whitehead, who are dedicated to solve the Cholera outbreak in London. The Cholera outbreak started in 1854 when a little girl was infected and her contents contaminated a water pump on Broad Street. Soon, London was filled with infected residents and no one could figure out what caused it. Thankfully, John Snow, Henry Whitehead, and other characters were able to understand and piece together how the Cholera outbreak started. John Snow played a big role in understanding what caused the Cholera outbreak in London. John Snow as a physician was very different in 1854 than how a present physician would be in 2016. The main difference pertains to the research methods. During Snow’s research for the Cholera outbreak, he …show more content…
He created his map of the city in a bird’s eye view and he marked all of the Cholera outbreaks and the water sources. His map represented all of the patterns and clues of the victims in the city. His map also covered other sections of London, not just the one infected city. One misconception about John Snow’s map is the way he designed it. Edmund Cooper was one of the first to create a map of the Cholera outbreak. For his map, “each house that had suffered a loss, Cooper drew a black bar by the address, followed by a succession of thin lines indicating how many deaths had occurred at that address” (Johnson, 2006, p. 145). For Snow’s map, he used the same method by drawing black bars on houses that showed deaths and the thicker the lines, the more deaths occurred in the household. The misconception is that he was not the first one to create a map during the Cholera outbreak and he got ideas from Edmund Cooper. Although there were misconceptions, the author still named the book after John Snow’s map. He named it The Ghost Map because John Snow was an important individual in discovering the cause of