Book Report: A Broad Goes Abroad: Musings From The British Isles

It was never supposed to get this bad. A few cases but never like this. Dead line the streets and the biggest question in the city is “Who is next?”. It started out small, this awful plague, but now almost everyone I know has either been infected or has died. I walk down the streets and groaning and moaning are emanating from the houses. Wheelbarrows full of people wheel through town. Everything seems so surreal but my mission had to be the most important thing right now. I had to get water to my brother, who is infected

It did not matter who the person was poor, rich, young, old, healthy or unhealthy the black death was deadly. Passage two states, “ The poor were hit harder than aristocats becuase they were generally poorer health and less able to resist the disease and because they were more crowed together”. This explains that the Black Death affected the poor people more because it killed them faster and the rich were not dying as fast because they had money and they could afford little treatment and they were not as crowded like the poor. The more crowed the people were the faster the diesease got around because it was so easily to spread.

By the second year of pandemic the plague had killed an estimated 25 million (Plague) of the peasantry, nobility, and clergy. Nobody was immune to the disease. The poor sanitation became a massive issue with the lack of

Certain classes of people seem to be at increased risk of contracting the disease. Those who were most at risk were in situations that demanded close contact with the infected: prisoners, doctors, clergymen and nurses. It was reported that women were more susceptible, (689) also the young and all persons who were weakened by poverty and a hard life. The malady was said to have “attacked especially the meaner sort and common people—seldom the magnates.” (688) However, it cannot be said that the ruling class escaped the plague unscathed. Among the causalities of this terrible disease was Alfonzo XI of Castile.

The novel “Legend” by Marie Lu is set in dystopic future Los Angles. Day is the most wanted criminal in the Republic of America; however, behind his criminal façade he is a teenager living a life of poverty trying his best to protect his family. In order to protect his family Day embarks on a hospital heist to gain medication to save his family from the plague currently sweeping the nation. During the heist a Captain of Military named Metias is killed who was the brother of the Republic’s young prodigy, June. June is a young, intelligent soldier of a wealthy family and elite status; after discovering about her brother’s murder she pledges she will find his assumed killer, Day.

Traveling abroad promotes broadening of the mind. As if Howard wasn 't already a life changing experience for Coates, he then travels France and gains a new perspective. He writes, “ And it occurred to me, listening to your mother, that France was not a thought experiment but an actual place filled with actual people whose traditions were different, whose lives really were different, whose sense of beauty was different.” (Coates 151) Coates understands that seeing the world from different perspectives humbles the mind. He no longer had to live with the stigma of being a black man in America. Traveling has provide Coates with experiences that would be unlikely if he didn’t attend Howard University.

Chapter One of of Jim Murphy’s book, An American Plague, opens with the quote, ‘About this time, this destroying scourge, the malignant fever, crept in among us” (Murphy 1). This quote is accredited to Mathew Carey in November, 1793. The term scourge is defined as, “a person or thing that cause great trouble of suffering,” and the term malignant is defined as, “tending to produce death or deterioration.” These are very strong terms with extremely negative connotative meanings. The figurative language which is evident in the quote at the opening of Chapter One is personification. Carey’s quote give yellow fever an eerie, human-like quality when he writes, “the destroying scourge, the malignant fever, CREPT in among us” (Murphy 1). CArey’s word choices and use of personification help to create a powerful image in the reader’s mind of the threat looming over the city of Philadelphia.\

In American industrial cities, late 1800s, Poor neighborhood were not the best place to live. With poor living conditions, poor sanitation and crowded housing, many epidemics of infectious disease spread into the poor population and touched even the wealthy class. Cities such as New York were crowded and workers were living in tenements, which were often cramped, poorly lit and poorly aerated. Moreover, these tenements lacked of adequate plumbing, therefore waste was flooding in the public streets. Streets was crowded of waste and garbage. Population was poorly nourished and has a poor life hygiene like water pollution and poisoned food and milk. Accordingly, infectious disease was the common death reason. Big cities had known outbreaks of

Doctors, churches and government were powerless against the disease. The only way to escape the infection was to avoid contact with infected persons and contaminated objects.(paraphrase) (Therefore, some cities set up the policy to prevent strangers from entering their cities, particularly, merchants and Jews. The discrimination of Jewish population became another major problem. The people laid the blame of the plague at the feet of the Jews.)

The Great Plague is one of the most talked about epidemics that London has ever faced. Almost anyone with a general idea of immunology or the history of western medicine will be able to identify the Great Plague of the 17th century as a major killer in the Stuart Period of London. However, the same person may not be aware of the crisis that occurred in Victorian London: cholera like every epidemic that has proceeded attempted to decimate the population. Cholera, a disease where severe dehydration along with the build of toxins in the gut, kills you in the matter of two days, without intravenously administered fluids death was all but certain. The Ghost Map, a historiographical novel written by Steven Johnson, tries to bring more awareness

air.(11)The infected to be those who were poor or already ill.(10)The plague still is here

setting, specifically that of the last apartment, to capture the essence of the plague in the

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jonathan Carmichael has also turned travel inconveniences into something beneficial.

San Francisco in 1900 was a town with gold on its mind. But there is something more sinister lurking in the future. This was the era of the emergence of the automobile, so streets were still polluted with horse manure, often unpaved, and society itself had little knowledge of cleanliness and hygiene. This is also a time of Chinese immigration, which caused social tension between Caucasians and Chinese. Being a port city opened San Francisco up to many diseases and this will be the way that the plague enters the city. The plague would put up a fight for many years and two scientists Joseph Kinyoun and Rupert Blue were the main leaders in the battle against the plague in San Francisco.

While the possibility of this movie becoming a reality is clearly preposterous, it is interesting to think about what the few immune people could actually be like if this plague were to happen. The movie takes place in 2010 in the elite, metropolitan city of New York. With 1% immunity from the plague, what are the chances that the one survivor living in NYC is a very intelligent U.S. Army doctor and scientist? Going even further, what are the chances that he is all of these things and he is black? According to the American Community Survey for the U.S. Census, only 25.1% of the population of New York City is black.