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

by Steven Johnson

This is the great irony of Chadwick’s life: in the process of inventing the whole idea of a social safety net, he unwittingly sent thousands of Londoners to an early grave. How could such noble aspirations lead to such devastating results? In Chadwick’s case, there is a simple explanation: he insisted, to the point of obstinacy, on following his nose. The air of London was killing Londoners, he claimed, and thus the route to public health had to begin with removing noxious smells. He expressed this notion most famously—and most comically—in his 1846 testimony to a parliamentary committee investigating the problem of London’s sewage: “All smell is, if it be intense, immediate acute disease; and eventually we may say that, by depressing the system and rendering it susceptible to the action of other causes, all smell is disease.”