The decline and fall of copyediting: part n in an intermittent series

The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson, UK Penguin p'back, page 85:

"At the height of a nineteenth-century cholera outbreak, a thousand Londoners would often die of the disease in a matter of weeks - out of a population that was a quarter the size of modern New York."

Page 87:

"During the epidemics of the late 1840s and the 1850s, a thousand Londoners would typically die of cholera in a matter of weeks — in a city a quarter the size of present-day New York — and the deaths would barely warrant a headline."

I mean, I know attention spans are said to be falling, but come on. I guess I should be grateful it wasn't the facing page.