Cholera Outbreak In Henry Whitehead's The Ghost Map

In the summer of 1854, London was coming out as one of the most modern cities in the world. With nearly 2.4 million people living in the area at the time, the city’s infrastructure itself was having a hard time providing for the basic needs of its residents. The biggest problem existing within the city at that time was its waste removal system, or for better terms, its lack of one. Human waste was piling up everywhere, from people houses to the rivers and drinking water. This situation was the perfect breeding conditions for a number of diseases, and towards the end of that summer, one of the most deadly of them all took over. It took the work of both a physician and a local minister in order to discover the mysterious cause of the

6. Why would evidence of cholera in people living side by side, differing only in water supply, provide critical evidence?

However, with Whitehead’s local knowledge, his survey was able to track down hundreds of residents who had fled out after the weeks after outbreak. Snow in other hand; his survey had focused only on the Soho residents with majority had consumed with Board Street water before getting ill. Authorities at that time, they thought it was caused all because the “smell”. John’s theory convinced nobody at first. It had taken many years made public health authorities to believe that cholera is a waterborne disease. The map itself had debunked the theory of miasma and it made the city removed the pump handle in the end and stopped spread out more disease.

They can better understand the areas which they want to research. As the information is better understood the area to research becomes more visible for the researcher. The questions that they once had to consider they do not have to worry about with mapping. The data helps answer the more complex questions of configurations and developments; it clears the worries on a more complex foundation of most researchers. I would say that the data will support policy making in San Francisco by inspiring local governments to use this data visualization model for the public release of many different kinds of

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

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 the very first chapter, Steven Johnson begins to set the scene of how the overpopulation of London coupled with extreme levels of poverty created the perfect opportunity for Cholera to spread in the rapid manner that it did. On page one it states; “These were the London underclasses, at least a hundred thousand strong. So immense were their numbers that had the scavengers broken off and formed their own city, it would have been the fifth-largest in all of England.” Johnson mentions that the city of London had become a city of Scavengers, consisting of; bone-pickers, pure-finders, dredgermen, sewer-hunters and night-soil men. However, the harshest reflection of the Cholera epidemic of 1854 is conveyed by John Snow himself. On page 59 it states; “The young Snow observed

The tenements where immigrants lived were unacceptably tiny and unsanitary. The East Side was packed at the rate of 290,000 per square mile at one point, while the greatest crowding of Old London was at the rate of 175,816 (12). Due to this overpopulation, diseases spread rapidly and killed thousands of unprotected tenants. Tenements also lacked fresh air because they did not have windows, which contributed to the fast advancement of cholera until around 1869 (14). One of the homes that Riis visited had “half a dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay

Although most disease struck the poorest, the upper class was not fully immune. Because people wanted to move to cities to make their lives better, they were forced to live around these diseases without proper means for prevention, protection, and recovery. Once contracting the disease, they would either die within hours or suffer from uncontrollable diarrhea and pain. In addition, scientific knowledge on disease was not as developed as it fortunately is today. Doctors had not yet learned the concept of a germ theory and instead associated the disease with the “bad air” that surrounded toxic, polluted cities. This “bad air” was known as miasa and was incorrectly used to explain the spread of cholera in major cities during the mid 1800s. After studies and research, doctors noticed that there was a heavy concentration of miasmata near certain rivers, but they still connected it to a lack of air quality in bustling cities such as Manchester, London, and Paris. Although air pollution and coal emissions did play a role in certain illnesses, they were not the main cause for diseases such as cholera. Poor ventilation, dirty homes, malnourishment, and no access to clean water made people easily susceptible to a ruthless disease like cholera. Moreover, causes of cholera were investigated more thoroughly after John Snow’s theory claimed that cholera was spread through the water John Snow was an English physician who is today considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, the branch of medicine that deals with the distribution and control of diseases relating to health. Finally, doctors could see cholera in a new light and were able to find better means of protection and prevention for its victims. Today, doctors recognize the germ theory of disease which states that some diseases are caused by microorganisms, and not just by “bad

Many immigrants that come to Newark are forced to live in tight spaces, and even tenements, meaning that those who are the most targeted by this disease are the immigrants that come to Newark. Most people of higher classes began to accuse immigrants of bringing the disease, rather than focusing on eradicating the disease. Everyone wants to point fingers at immigrants because it is easier to point out those who are new to town, and are not pivotl to society. For these immigrants, many of them are victims to this disease all due to being forced in a poor lifestyle because of their financial status. Stuart Galishoff, a writer, also touches on Cholera hitting Newark, and writes a book titled, “Newark, the Nation’s unhealthiest City”. In this book he claims, “The epidemic raged out of control until late August. By a quirk of fate the last case occurred in early September in the same house in which the diseases had first appeared some two months earlier. In all, 127 had contracted Cholera and 65 died” (54). Through his perspective of Cholera coming to Newark, the audience is given a time frame of when this occurred, as well as the toll it took on its residents. This Information can be used to see how a disease can come to a city, collect victims, and then eventually leave. Cholera is a disease that is a part of Newark’s past, and through Galishoff words it becomes evident that Cholera is a cyclic disease whose

The Cholera Years by Charles E. Rosenberg and A Shopkeeper’s Millennium by Paul E. Johnson initially viewed as two completely different and unrelated books, but upon examination they both deal with the social changes during the mid-nineteenth century and how the American society dealt with those changes. Rosenberg’s book focuses on the epidemics of cholera, primarily in New York City, and how during the three different epidemics society reacted differently to discover the cause and act upon the recommended solutions to combat and deal with the cholera disease. Johnson’s book discusses the early development of the city of Rochester, New York from 1815-1837 and the social reform movements that affected the city during this time period.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson discusses the issues with the Victorian era and how they led to the cholera epidemic and greatly influenced science and today’s modern world. Underneath the central message of understanding that horrible week of the cholera epidemic as one that defined today’s world of invention of modern life lies three themes that helped Steven Johnson shape The Ghost Map. The three themes being sewage systems, medicine, and epidemiology.

The book I was given to read about was the book “Ghost Map” by Steven Johnson. The central question for this book was “What key idea does the author of the book want to convey to you?”. I believe that Steven wanted to send the message that Cholera (the disease) was not an airborne disease but a disease that came from the digestion of water. Through this essay I will prove why I believe that this was the message that Steven was trying to portray when writing this book.

Although cholera is now well-documented and curable, for those in the nineteenth century the disease was frightening and unexplainable; symptoms occurred rapidly and were followed by a torturous death. Although naval ships had undergone substantial reforms by the nineteenth century, unresolved issues of overcrowding, limited clean resources and

Thank you for your informational post. Dr. Snow was also interested in the cause and spread of cholera. His research work supported his hypothesis that cholera was an infectious disease spread by fecal contamination of drinking water ( Aschengrau & Seage, 2014). A review of the available literature consider Dr. Snow’s investigation a “perfect model” in the manner that he conducted his investigation (p.21). According to Aschengrau & Seage (2014), Dr. Snow organized his observations logically so that meaningful inferences could be derived from them. Then he recognized that a “natural experiment” had occurred in the subdistricts of London that would enable him to gather unquestionable proof either for or against the hypothesis. Lastly, he conducted