TEDSalon 2006
Steven Johnson: How the "ghost map" helped end a killer disease
史蒂芬约翰逊带我们参观《神秘地图》
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作者史蒂芬约翰逊带领我们参观《神秘地图》10分钟，这本书讲地是1854年发生在伦敦的霍乱，以及它在科学，城市以及现代社会上的影响。
Steven Johnson - Writer
Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. Full bio
Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:25
If you haven't ordered yet, I generally find the rigatoni with the spicy tomato sauce
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如果你还没有点菜，我通常发现带有辣番茄就酱的肋状通心粉
00:32
goes best with diseases of the small intestine.
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和小肠疾病最相配。
00:35
(Laughter)
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（笑声）
00:37
So, sorry -- it just feels like I should be doing stand-up up here because of the setting.
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对不起——只是因为这里的环境我感觉我应该来个脱口秀。
00:41
No, what I want to do is take you back to 1854
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不，我想做的是在下面的几分钟，带你们回到1854年的伦敦。
00:46
in London for the next few minutes, and tell the story --
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并且讲个故事——
00:50
in brief -- of this outbreak,
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简单地说——关于一个瘟疫的爆发。
00:53
which in many ways, I think, helped create the world that we live in today,
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这个瘟疫，从很多方面来讲，我认为，帮助创造了我们今天生存的世界，
00:57
and particularly the kind of city that we live in today.
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特别是我们现在居住的城市的样子。
00:59
This period in 1854, in the middle part of the 19th century,
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1854年这个时期，19世纪的中期，
01:03
in London's history, is incredibly interesting for a number of reasons.
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在伦敦的历史上是很不可思议的有趣的。原因有很多。
01:07
But I think the most important one is that
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但是我认为最重要的一个原因是
01:10
London was this city of 2.5 million people,
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伦敦是个拥有两百五十万人口的城市，
01:13
and it was the largest city on the face of the planet at that point.
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它是那时候这个星球上最大的一个城市。
01:18
But it was also the largest city that had ever been built.
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但是，它也是所有曾经建筑的城市中最大的。
01:20
And so the Victorians were trying to live through
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所以维多利亚女王时代的人差不多是边过日子，
01:23
and simultaneously invent a whole new scale of living:
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边创造着一种全新的生活标准。
01:27
this scale of living that we, you know, now call "metropolitan living."
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这种生活标准，你知道，我们现在称之为都市生活。
01:32
And it was in many ways, at this point in the mid-1850s, a complete disaster.
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从很多方面来讲，在19世纪50年代中期这个时间里，它是一个十足的灾难
01:38
They were basically a city living with a modern kind of industrial metropolis
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那时的城市生活基本上是一个现代的化的工业大都市
01:42
with an Elizabethan public infrastructure.
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但是仅有伊丽莎白时期的古老的公共基础设施。
01:45
So people, for instance, just to gross you out for a second,
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因此人们，举个例子来说，仅仅让你作呕一下子，
01:50
had cesspools of human waste in their basement. Like, a foot to two feet deep.
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在他们的地下室，有人类排泄物的化粪池，大约，一两英尺深
01:56
And they would just kind of throw the buckets down there
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并且他们可能只是扔一个水桶在那里
01:59
and hope that it would somehow go away,
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并希望它以某种方式地消失，
02:01
and of course it never really would go away.
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当然，它将永远不会消失。
02:04
And all of this stuff, basically, had accumulated to the point
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而且，所有这些脏东西，基本上，都已经到达一个程度
02:07
where the city was incredibly offensive to just walk around in.
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就是这个城市，只是走走就非常令人讨厌。
02:11
It was an amazingly smelly city. Not just because of the cesspools,
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它是一个非常臭的城市，不仅仅是因为那些化粪池，
02:15
but also the sheer number of livestock in the city would shock people.
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而且这个城市里大量的家畜也会震惊人们。
02:18
Not just the horses, but people had cows in their attics that they would use for milk,
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不仅仅是马，而且人们在屋顶上有他们用于牛奶的牛，
02:22
that they would hoist up there and keep them in the attic
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他们可能会将那些牛升起来放到屋顶上
02:25
until literally their milk ran out and they died,
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直到他们的牛奶确实的干涸，然后他们死亡，
02:27
and then they would drag them off to the bone boilers down the street.
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接着，他们会将他们拖到街上的骨头锅炉里。
02:33
So, you would just walk around London at this point
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因此，你将在这个时期，仅仅在伦敦市里走走
02:36
and just be overwhelmed with this stench.
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就会被这种恶臭所压倒。
02:39
And what ended up happening is that an entire emerging public health system
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最后发生的是当时新兴的公共健康系统认为
02:44
became convinced that it was the smell that was killing everybody,
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恶臭正在不断的杀害每一个人，
02:48
that was creating these diseases
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恶臭正在创造着那些每三年或四年就会发生的疾病
02:50
that would wipe through the city every three or four years.
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扫遍这个城市。
02:53
And cholera was really the great killer of this period.
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而且，霍乱真的是这个时期最强大的杀手。
02:55
It arrived in London in 1832, and every four or five years
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它在1832出现在英国，然后每四年或五年发生一次。
03:00
another epidemic would take 10,000, 20,000 people in London
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每次流行都在伦敦造成一万到两万人死亡，
03:04
and throughout the U.K.
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并波及到整个英国。
03:06
And so the authorities became convinced that this smell was this problem.
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因此，政府确信这个恶臭就是问题的根源。
03:10
We had to get rid of the smell.
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我们必须摆脱这个恶臭。
03:12
And so, in fact, they concocted a couple of early, you know,
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因此，事实上，他们建立了一些早先的，你知道
03:15
founding public-health interventions in the system of the city,
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在城市系统里，成立公共卫生干预措施
03:19
one of which was called the "Nuisances Act,"
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那些措施中的一个被成为”滋扰法“
03:21
which they got everybody as far as they could
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就是他们尽量让每个人
03:23
to empty out their cesspools and just pour all that waste into the river.
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把他们的花粪池清得越空越好，将所有的排泄屋倾倒到河里。
03:28
Because if we get it out of the streets, it'll smell much better,
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因为如果我们将它从街上弄走，城市应该就闻起来好多了，
03:32
and -- oh right, we drink from the river.
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噢，对了，我们饮用河里的水。
03:36
So what ended up happening, actually,
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因此，结局，事实上
03:38
is they ended up increasing the outbreaks of cholera
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是他们最后增加了霍乱的爆发。
03:40
because, as we now know, cholera is actually in the water.
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因为，就像我们现在知道的，霍乱其实就在水里。
03:44
It's a waterborne disease, not something that's in the air.
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它是一个由水携带传播的。而不是通过空气。
03:47
It's not something you smell or inhale; it's something you ingest.
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它不是你闻进去或呼吸进去的东西，它是你咽下去的东西。
03:50
And so one of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century
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所以，19世纪公共健康系统的创立，
03:54
effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively
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有效地污染了伦敦的供应水，比
03:58
than any modern day bioterrorist could have ever dreamed of doing.
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任何现代生物恐怖分子梦想做的更有效。
04:01
So this was the state of London in 1854,
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这就是伦敦在1854年的状况，
04:05
and in the middle of all this carnage and offensive conditions,
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在这种屠杀和进攻的时期，
04:11
and in the midst of all this scientific confusion
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和这种科学认识上的混乱之中，
04:14
about what was actually killing people,
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这样的状况事实上是在屠杀人们。
04:17
it was a very talented classic 19th century multi-disciplinarian named John Snow,
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那时有一个名叫斯诺的人，他是个非常有才华的19世纪的传统的多规律学者，
04:23
who was a local doctor in Soho in London,
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他是伦敦苏荷的一个地方医生，
04:26
who had been arguing for about four or five years
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他一直争论了四五年。
04:28
that cholera was, in fact, a waterborne disease,
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他认为霍乱，实际上，是一个种水性疾病，
04:31
and had basically convinced nobody of this.
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而且，基本上没有一个人相信他。
04:34
The public health authorities had largely ignored what he had to say.
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公共健康机关完全忽略了他的话。
04:38
And he'd made the case in a number of papers and done a number of studies,
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而且，他把他的想法写成了很多论文，还做了很多研究，
04:42
but nothing had really stuck.
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但是，没有一个真正被保存下来的。
04:44
And part of -- what's so interesting about this story to me
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另外，关于他的故事，我非常感兴趣的一部分
04:46
is that in some ways, it's a great case study in how cultural change happens,
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是 ，从某些方面来讲，这是个非常重要的案例来研究文化的进展是如何发生的。
04:51
how a good idea eventually comes to win out over much worse ideas.
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一个好的想法是如何最终战胜那些不好的想法的。
04:56
And Snow labored for a long time with this great insight that everybody ignored.
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斯洛为这个被每一个人忽略的伟大观点辛劳了很长一段时间。
05:00
And then on one day, August 28th of 1854,
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然后，有一天，1854年8月28日，
05:05
a young child, a five-month-old girl whose first name we don't know,
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一个小孩，一个5个月大的小女孩，我们不知道她姓什么，
05:09
we know her only as Baby Lewis, somehow contracted cholera,
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我们只知道她叫宝贝刘易斯，不知如何染上了霍乱。
05:13
came down with cholera at 40 Broad Street.
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这样霍乱来到了40大街。
05:16
You can't really see it in this map, but this is the map
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在这个地图上，你无法真正看到这个地方，但是，就是这个地图
05:19
that becomes the central focus in the second half of my book.
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成为我的书的后半部分的中心内容。
05:24
It's in the middle of Soho, in this working class neighborhood,
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它位于苏荷的中部，工人阶级居住的地方。
05:26
this little girl becomes sick and it turns out that the cesspool,
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这个小女孩病了。 而那里有一个化粪池，
05:30
that they still continue to have, despite the Nuisances Act,
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他们不管滋扰法，依然保持着的化粪池，
05:33
bordered on an extremely popular water pump,
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濒临一个非常受欢迎的水泵，
05:37
local watering hole that was well known for the best water in all of Soho,
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这个水泵被认为是整个苏荷最好的水源。
05:41
that all the residents from Soho and the surrounding neighborhoods would go to.
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所有的苏荷居民，还有周围的居民都会去。
05:45
And so this little girl inadvertently ended up
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这个小女孩最后无意中
05:48
contaminating the water in this popular pump,
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污染了这个受欢迎的水泵里的水。
05:50
and one of the most terrifying outbreaks in the history of England
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接着英国历史上最可怕的瘟疫，
05:56
erupted about two or three days later.
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就在两三天后爆发了。
05:58
Literally, 10 percent of the neighborhood died in seven days,
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从字面上讲，在七天里，十分之一的居民都死了。
06:02
and much more would have died if people hadn't fled
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如果人们没有在最初几天逃离，
06:04
after the initial outbreak kicked in.
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更多的人会死。
06:07
So it was this incredibly terrifying event.
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所以，是这个难以置信的可怕事件。
06:09
You had these scenes of entire families dying
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你可以看到整个家庭，
06:12
over the course of 48 hours of cholera,
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在48小时里，死于霍乱。
06:14
alone in their one-room apartments, in their little flats.
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孤单地死在他们的一间屋的公寓，或小套间里。
06:19
Just an extraordinary, terrifying scene.
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一个非常可怕的场面。
06:22
Snow lived near there, heard about the outbreak,
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斯洛住在那附近，听到了这个事件，
06:26
and in this amazing act of courage went directly into the belly of the beast
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极其有勇气的直接进入这个虎口
06:29
because he thought an outbreak that concentrated
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因为他认为这个瘟疫的爆发
06:32
could actually potentially end up convincing people that,
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可能能让人们相信，
06:36
in fact, the real menace of cholera was in the water supply and not in the air.
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事实上，霍乱其实是真正通过饮用水而不是空气威胁人们的。
06:42
He suspected an outbreak that concentrated
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他怀疑这么集中的瘟疫爆发
06:44
would probably involve a single point source.
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可能始于一个单一的点源。
06:48
One single thing that everybody was going to
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一个每个人去过的一个单一的点。
06:50
because it didn't have the traditional slower path
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因为这次没有传统的
06:53
of infections that you might expect.
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你能预料的感染的缓慢途径。
06:56
And so he went right in there and started interviewing people.
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因此，他去了那里，并开始了采访人们。
06:59
He eventually enlisted the help of this amazing other figure,
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他最终得到了这个另外一个惊人的人物的帮助，
07:03
who's kind of the other protagonist of the book --
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他就是这本书的另外一个主角。
07:05
this guy, Henry Whitehead, who was a local minister,
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这个人，亨利白石，是当地的牧师，
07:08
who was not at all a man of science, but was incredibly socially connected;
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他完全不相信科学，但他有非常好的社会关系。
07:11
he knew everybody in the neighborhood.
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他知道那里的每一个人，
07:13
And he managed to track down, Whitehead did,
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所以他设法调查了，白石调查了，
07:15
many of the cases of people who had drunk water from the pump,
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很多人喝了这个水泵里的水的人，
07:18
or who hadn't drunk water from the pump.
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和那些没有喝这个水泵里的水的人。
07:20
And eventually Snow made a map of the outbreak.
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最后斯洛给这个事件画了一张图。
07:25
He found increasingly that people who drank from the pump were getting sick.
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他逐渐发现喝过这个水泵里的水的人在不停的生病。
07:28
People who hadn't drunk from the pump were not getting sick.
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没有喝过那个水泵里的水的人没有生病。
07:31
And he thought about representing that
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然后他想到了用一种表
07:33
as a kind of a table of statistics of people living in different neighborhoods,
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居住在不同街道的人的统计表，
07:36
people who hadn't, you know, percentages of people who hadn't,
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没有喝的人，你知道的，没有喝的人的百分比，
07:38
but eventually he hit upon the idea
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但是最后，他偶然发现了这个想法
07:40
that what he needed was something that you could see.
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那就是他所需要的是你可以看的。
07:42
Something that would take in a sense a higher-level view
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从某种意义上可以在更高水平上看到
07:44
of all this activity that had been happening in the neighborhood.
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在这个居民区到底发生了什么。
07:47
And so he created this map,
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然后他创造了这个地图，
07:50
which basically ended up representing all the deaths in the neighborhoods
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这个地图基本上显示了在这个地区所有的死亡人数。
07:54
as black bars at each address.
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用黑色的条杠，在每一个地址上。
07:57
And you can see in this map, the pump right at the center of it
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然后在这个地图你可以看到，这个水泵正好在地图的中间
08:00
and you can see that one of the residences down the way
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而且，你还可以看到这下面的一个住处
08:02
had about 15 people dead.
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有15人死亡。
08:04
And the map is actually a little bit bigger.
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这个地图实际上比我给你们看的稍微大些。
08:06
As you get further and further away from the pump,
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随着你不断的远离这个水泵，
08:08
the deaths begin to grow less and less frequent.
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死亡人数开始逐渐变得越来越少。
08:11
And so you can see this something poisonous
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因此你可以看到这种有毒东西
08:14
emanating out of this pump that you could see in a glance.
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污染了这个你可以很容易看到的水泵。
08:18
And so, with the help of this map,
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因此，在这个地图的帮助下，
08:20
and with the help of more evangelizing
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在这个更像传福音的帮助下
08:22
that he did over the next few years
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他在接下来的几年里做的研究
08:24
and that Whitehead did, eventually, actually,
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还有白石做的，最后，事实上
08:26
the authorities slowly started to come around.
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政府慢慢的开始接受。
08:28
It took much longer than sometimes we like to think in this story,
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这个过程比我们通常以为对这类事情该花的时间要长很多，
08:31
but by 1866, when the next big cholera outbreak came to London,
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但是到1866年，当下一个大型的霍乱在伦敦爆发的时候
08:36
the authorities had been convinced -- in part because of this story,
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政府确信了——部分是因为这个故事，
08:40
in part because of this map -- that in fact the water was the problem.
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另一部分是因为这个地图——事实上水是问题的存在。
08:44
And they had already started building the sewers in London,
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他们已经开始在伦敦建立下水道，
08:46
and they immediately went to this outbreak
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而且立刻
08:48
and they told everybody to start boiling their water.
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告诉了每一个人开始把水烧开。
08:50
And that was the last time that London has seen a cholera outbreak since.
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从那以后，那是伦敦最后的一次霍乱爆发。
08:55
So, part of this story, I think -- well, it's a terrifying story,
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因此，这个故事的一部份，我认为——当然它是一个非常可怕的故事，
08:58
it's a very dark story and it's a story
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它是一个非常黑暗的故事，也是一个
09:00
that continues on in many of the developing cities of the world.
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不停发生在世界上很多发展城市的故事。
09:04
It's also a story really that is fundamentally optimistic,
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这也是一个从根本上很乐观的故事，
09:07
which is to say that it's possible to solve these problems
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也就是说解决那些问题是可能的，
09:10
if we listen to reason, if we listen to the kind of wisdom of these kinds of maps,
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如果我们听信来由，如果我们听信那些地图的贤明之处，
09:14
if we listen to people like Snow and Whitehead,
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如果我听信像斯洛和白石一样的人，
09:16
if we listen to the locals who understand
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如果我们听信那些当地的懂得
09:18
what's going on in these kinds of situations.
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在那样的情形下发生着什么的人。
09:21
And what it ended up doing is making the idea
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最后这个故事引发了一个概念，
09:24
of large-scale metropolitan living a sustainable one.
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就是大型都市生活应该是可持续发展的。
09:28
When people were looking at 10 percent of their neighborhoods dying
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当人们看着十分之一他们的邻居上的人在
09:31
in the space of seven days,
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7天的时间里死去的时候，
09:33
there was a widespread consensus that this couldn't go on,
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有一个广泛的共识，那就是，这不能继续下去，
09:36
that people weren't meant to live in cities of 2.5 million people.
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人们不应该生活在有两百五十万人口的城市里。
09:40
But because of what Snow did, because of this map,
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但是，因为斯洛所做的，因为这张地图，
09:42
because of the whole series of reforms
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因为所有这一系列的革命
09:44
that happened in the wake of this map,
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发生在这个地图背后的，
09:46
we now take for granted that cities have 10 million people,
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我们现在认为拥有100万的城市很理所当然。
09:50
cities like this one are in fact sustainable things.
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像这样的城市实际上是持续发展的。
09:52
We don't worry that New York City is going to collapse in on itself
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我们不担心纽约会自己崩溃
09:55
quite the way that, you know, Rome did,
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以那种方式，你知道的，就像罗马，
09:57
and be 10 percent of its size in 100 years or 200 years.
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在100年或200年里，成为它原有的大小的十分之一。
10:00
And so that in a way is the ultimate legacy of this map.
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这个概念在某种程度上成为这个地图的根本遗产。
10:03
It's a map of deaths that ended up creating a whole new way of life,
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它是一个创造了一种全新的生活方式的死亡地图，
10:08
the life that we're enjoying here today. Thank you very much.
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我们正在享受的生活方式，非常感谢。
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Steven Johnson - WriterSteven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience.
Why you should listen
Steven Johnson is a leading light of today's interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to innovation. His writings have influenced everything from cutting-edge ideas in urban planning to the battle against 21st-century terrorism. Johnson was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the top ten brains of the digital future, and The Wall Street Journal calls him "one of the most persuasive advocates for the role of collaboration in innovation."
Johnson's work on the history of innovation inspired the Emmy-nominated six-part series on PBS, "How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson," which aired in the fall of 2014. The book version of How We Got To Now was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His new book, Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, revolves around the creative power of play and delight: ideas and innovations that set into motion many momentous changes in science, technology, politics and society.
Johnson is also the author of the bestselling Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, one of his many books celebrating progress and innovation. Others include The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map. Everything Bad Is Good For You, one of the most discussed books of 2005, argued that the increasing complexity of modern media is training us to think in more complex ways. Emergence and Future Perfect explore the power of bottom-up intelligence in both nature and contemporary society.
An innovator himself, Johnson has co-created three influential sites: the pioneering online magazine FEED, the Webby-Award-winning community site, Plastic.com, and the hyperlocal media site outside.in, which was acquired by AOL in 2011.
Johnson is a regular contributor to WIRED magazine, as well as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and many other periodicals. He has appeared on many high-profile television programs, including "The Charlie Rose Show," "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Steven Johnson | Speaker | TED.com