You may not have heard of Edwin Chadwick, but you most certainly have been affected by his work. As Londoners in the mid-19th century suffered from outbreaks of disease, Chadwick pioneered the idea that the state should be directly involved in protecting citizens’ health and that significant investments in infrastructure could help people live longer. Steven Johnson notes in The Ghost Map, his history of the cholera epidemic, that, “for better or worse, Chadwick’s career can be seen as the very point of origin for the whole concept of ‘big government’ as we know it today.”
Though Chadwick sought to improve sanitation — a sewage system that would dump waste into the Thames and an improved water-delivery system — his tenure ended up being a horror show. Obsessed with the “miasmatic” theory of disease transmission, or the idea that all disease is transmitted through the air, he failed to understand that cholera was waterborne. He also failed to understand that the river, the city’s water supply, was now a giant cesspool. Thus the water being piped to Londoners courtesy of Chadwick was the exact thing carrying the deadly bacteria making them sick. It turns out the only thing worse than there being no one in charge of public health is a public health czar who is wrong, leading to deadly consequences.
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