Blog Post #2

Why Think About History? The Past is Prologue!

The past is prologue, in other words, the past is the beginning of the current story—the world we live in! How do we figure out why our current world has so many problems?

First, we can look to history to see how we got here. But we can ALSO look to history to see what worked and what didn’t and use that very valuable information to make plans for dealing with—aka “fixing”—the current problems. Shakespeare wrote “the past is prologue” over 400 years ago, and those words are just as true today. By the way, it’s why we still keep quoting Shakespeare! The guy was not just smart, he was wise! (That sounds like the topic of a future blog?)

The people who inhabit the worlds of Phantom Future and Quantum Verdict are living and functioning in real historical settings and events. As a student of history, I try to be accurate to even small details. So this current blog post addresses this issue of why read or study or give a second thought to history?

Well, this week on Here and Now, a National Public Radio (NPR) program, they started a new series called “Falsehoods” about beliefs and narratives that experts and ordinary humans got wrong for a LONG time. Eventually these were proven false, but only after many people were harmed or died, AND the ones who got it right were, well, not listened to or respected. If you’d like to hear this entire program, which is very interesting, I’ve provided a button below to take you to it.

This first program of the NPR series looks at what happened with the medical community’s handling of Covid, and they went back to a similar historic health crisis—cholera and the Broad Street outbreak of 1854! Yes, those of you who read Phantom Future are already ahead of the curve because you are knowledgable about this very deadly epidemic. Erik experienced the painful death of Julian and his wife when they were exposed to an outbreak south of the Thames that actually occurred a year before the Broad Street outbreak. That chapter describes the very sudden onset and the rapid deterioration as the body desperately tries to vacate everything in the digestive system to rid itself of the deadly bacteria. I describe the doctor’s treatment which is also a correct representation of the drugs and methods medical doctors used. That treatment by medical doctors resulted in more than a 50% death rate. Nonetheless, that treatment persisted for decades.

But something different happened in Erik’s life when the Broad Street outbreak happened a year later. Erik by that time is living with his mentor, Mr. Markham, who comes down with all the dreaded symptoms, but he tells Erik to fetch a homeopathic doctor. As Erik ran to the doctor’s home, he was not only afraid of losing his dear friend, he was terrified that he may be next to die horribly. But the homeopathic doctors had an entirely different treatment, and the death rate after their treatment was less than 10%. Erik administered the homeopathic liquid and Mr. Markham fell into a deep sleep instead of the gruesome final thralls of cholera. Mr. Markham gets well and lives on.

The NPR program centers on Dr. John Snow, who is also mentioned in Phantom Future. Dr. Snow was a fascinating doctor, an original thinker. The medical consensus (in other words, generally accepted medical opinion and belief that this must be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT) was that cholera came from miasmas in the air. In other words, foul smelling, stenchy air. Therefore, a person got cholera because of breathing in that air.

But Dr. Snow had been studying that earlier cholera outbreak from the previous year which occurred south of the Thames. He went from house to house and gathered the data of who got sick with cholera and who didn’t. Interestingly, not all the houses were on the same water systems. Adjacent houses could be getting their water from totally different water companies. So, even if they were next door neighbors, Dr. Snow’s map showed that the people of one house got cholera and the people next door did not. After he mapped each house and where the deaths occurred (this is sometimes called the “Ghost Map”), he saw the pattern. The water companies that got their water from the Thames in the middle of the city had the deaths. The water companies that got their water outside of London, before it reached the polluted city, provided water that did not carry the disease. He felt sure that water was the culprit, not miasmas in the air.

Of course, the medical community was not about to change its conviction that air, not water, spread the disease. They continued in that belief for decades more. But when the Broad Street cholera outbreak occurred a year later, Dr. Snow again did his house-to-house data gathering, and the map showed that the highest concentration of cholera was around the Broad Street pump. Because its water was cool and carbonated, people would stop by and get the water from that pump to take home, even some who lived farther away, like Mr. Markham and his housekeeper. But the local beer brewery had its own water source, a protected well. Snow learned that the workers there were not only drinking their beer, they also were not getting cholera. Snow took this evidence to the local water board and convinced them to close the Broad Street pump. The pump handle was removed, and the cholera stopped! That pump still stands to this day with a plaque and reminder of lessons learned…or were they?

The NPR program explains how “experts” can become narrow in perspective and not look outside their preconceptions or first conclusions. They discussed how it took the World Health Organization almost two years before they gave up their initial statement that Covid came on water particles or droplets, so it was communicated through touch (therefore the extensive hand washing advice). Now it is clear that it is communicated through the air, in aerosol form, through the breath. Yep! The miasma theory has come back, only this time it is the correct one!

But there is a historical lesson to be learned here: to open-mindedly examine the evidence and not too hastily accept assumptions or preconceptions. Keep the mind open and constantly gather and analyze the facts. For me, the operative word is facts. Be very careful and thorough with the facts. Thinking does make a difference! And often insights into what is happening now is in the past!

For those of you who want to learn more, I recommend this excellent book about John Snow and his courageous fight to find the cause of cholera: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. The weblink to it on Amazon is below. It’s a fascinating read!

So what are your thoughts?

John Snow and Figuring out an Epidemic/BOOK

NPR PROGRAM: “How the experts got the cholera outbreak of 1854 so wrong”