PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
September 2019
623
BOOK
REVIEW
Cartographies of Disease: Maps,
Mapping, and Medicine
Tom Koch
ESRI Press: 380 New York St, Redlands, CA; New expanded
edition (2017). xix and 403pp., diagrams, maps, photos, images,
index, notes. Softcover. $58.22 ISBN-10: 1589481208
Reviewed by
Robert Lipton, Fellow, Prevention
Research Center (PIRE), Berkeley California.
Cartographies of Disease (CoD), contains multitudes, func-
tioning as an up-to-date health and place primer as well as
a nuanced historical study of public health, medicine, and
science. This book is most suited to a university level intro-
ductory course in health geography or as a great reference for
professionals doing work in this area or contemplating doing
so. As an ESRI publication, this book is quite handsomely
produced with well-rendered maps, photos, and illustrations.
Much of the “meat” of CoD focuses, unsurprisingly, on the
cholera epidemic of mid-18
th
century London and John Snow
(chapters 4-6). Koch, nevertheless, expands considerably on
the first edition by adding topics such as advances in science
and computation, Ebola, H1N1 influenza, HIV, and other mod-
ern infectious diseases. In addition, Koch widens the notion of
geographic/spatial health to include chronic diseases such as
cancer and heart disease/stroke. More importantly, he goes
correctly in my view, considerably upstream to examine how
spatial methods allow the ability to examine socio-demograph-
ic and political determinants of health and health access. This
is key in the ability to coherently put people in places regard-
ing effective medical and public health research and policy.
Koch also discusses how advances in genomics and other more
basic biological sciences can be married to spatial epidemiolog-
ical methods to provide a more specific and effective ability to
predict and intervene across a range of outcomes. CoD has 14
chapters that include a plethora of interesting and sometimes
beautiful maps. The first chapters provide an introduction
and history of, not just mapmaking, but the epistemological
context in which maps are created and interpreted. The mid-
dle chapters focus on the history of public health and sanita-
tion uses of mapping and how this use was integrated into
political practice and policy. Later chapters focus on modern
disease and conceptual issues related to new methods.
Central to the first edition, the section on cholera in mid-
18th century England remains as powerhouse exploration of
the myth and reality of John Snow and places this story in a
broader scientific and political/historical context. This exten-
sive exploration of the “creation myth” of epidemiology shows,
in-depth, the complexities associated with dealing with bacte-
rial infection as well as the unstinting efforts and travails of
John Snow. Koch, writing elegantly about this time, places
Snow’s efforts in a much more complex setting than is typical
for the “John Snow and the pump handle” story. Indeed, Koch
describes an active medical and research culture in which
Snow’s efforts are one amongst many. At the time, given the
lack of germ theory to situate etiology, it was difficult to differ-
entiate scientific claims.
CoD also serves as a solid introduction to modern issues
related to the geography of health and illness. Most of the
advances in modern health and place issues have occurred
only in the last two decades or so due to the vast increase in
computational power and the inexpensiveness of this power.
Both spatial statistics and map generation have become much
more readily available. Previously, such work was simply too
complex to be implemented on anything less than a supercom-
puter. Koch does a good job describing the many approach-
es towards dealing with spatial data, differentiating between
mapping, spatial statistics, surface mapping, and areal map-
ping.
Although the genesis of health mapping arose from infec-
tious disease, chronic disease is also considered in this book.
Further, the obvious social epidemiological issues are well cov-
ered, particularly in terms of teasing out disparities in health
outcomes, access to health and other issues related to health,
such as safe/unsafe neighborhoods, food deserts and related.
The discussion of Ebola is particularly thorough, going into
depth on the political and geographic issues associated with
various epidemic occurrences of the virus. This more in-depth
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 85, No. 9, September 2019, pp. 623–624.
0099-1112/19/623–624
© 2019 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.85.9.624
