A Natural History

Chris Knight is managing editor of the Canadian HR Reporter.

In 1853, a cholera epidemic ravaged England, killing thousands.
Epidemiologist John Snow had been working on the puzzle of how the
disease is transmitted, and the deaths, though tragic, let him test his
hypothesis of transmission by contaminated water. Two rival companies
were supplying water to homes in South London—one took it from a place
in the Thames where the tides pushed sewage twice a day. The other drew
water upstream, where the tides did not reach, and Snow showed that its
customers were far less likely to contract the disease—the first
scientific proof that cholera bacteria can be carried by water.

Keith Oatley has taken the events of the epidemic and set them in the
fictitious town of Middlethorpe, England. His John Snow is an earnest,
forward-thinking doctor named John Leggate, transfixed by the idea of
solving the riddle of cholera, and also quite taken by an earnest,
forward-thinking woman, Marian Brooks. She reads Mary Wollstonecraft,
commiserates with her maiden aunt on the status of women in Victorian
times, and is also attracted to the good doctor, whose work she feels
she could benefit, being educated herself.

Their romance is strangely lacking in drama. She worries that John
finds it easier to share his work with fellow scientists in the town
than with her; he is embarrassed at the thought of letting her see
anything less than perfect work. But they face few trials in their
relationship, and few, too, on their medical quest (John is sometimes
ridiculed by townsfolk who cannot follow his reasoning, but this is more
an annoyance than anything else). A Natural History provides an
interesting look back at the state of medical thinking 150 years ago,
but the reader is seldom likely to get as excited about it as the
protagonists do.