The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

by Steven Johnson

Why would the authorities go to such lengths to destroy the Thames? All the members of these various commissions were fully aware that the waste being flushed into the river was having disastrous effects on the quality of the water. And they were equally aware that a significant percentage of the population was drinking that water. Even without a waterborne theory of cholera’s origin, it seems like madness to celebrate the ever-increasing tonnage of human excrement being flushed into the water supply. And, indeed, it was a kind of madness, the madness that comes from being under the spell of a Theory. If all smell was disease, if London’s health crisis was entirely attributable to contaminated air, then any effort to rid the houses and streets of miasmatic vapors was worth the cost, even if it meant turning the Thames into a river of sewage.