Pellagra Chapter Summaries

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

Mr. Gawande starts his literature on washing hands. He introduces two friends a microbiologist and an infectious disease specialist. Both work hard and diligently against the spread of diseases just like Semmelweis who is mentioned in the chapter. Something I learned, that not many realize, is that each year two million people acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Mainly because the clinicians only wash their hands one-third to one-half as many times as they should. Semmelweis, mentioned earlier, concluded in 1847 that doctors themselves were to blame for childbed fever, which was the leading cause of

Sampson, George, and Rameck were three kids from the ghetto of Newark, New Jersey. They came from low-income families, and grew up without father figures. All three of them always did well in school, but others around them made a lot of bad choices. This caused many events that them caused them to go to jail. When they met each other in University High School, the three doctors decided to promise to each other that they would all go to college and become doctors. After they made the pact, there were a few problems, but these incidents never stopped them from pursuing their dream of becoming doctors. Today, Dr. Hunt is a Board certified internist at University Medical Center at Princeton

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

Another example from the book is in chapter 2 on page 15 the idea that illness was caused by microscopic organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, was not known at the time. Instead, doctors based their medical thinking on the 2,500-year-old Greek humoral theory. THis concept stated that good health resulted when body fluids, called humors, were balance. This means that you could have the humors. The humors were phlegm, choler, bile, and blood.

In this chapter we start seeing a flow threw the book Etta Mae is getting back from another one of her trips and is coming to her home which she shares with her good friend Mattie Michaels. As she arrives in a new car , with a new outfit and carrying records. This chapter the author , Gloria Naylor adds in song lyrics to give us the reader some additional information on the evens happing . “I love my man I’m a liar if I say I don’tI love my man I’m a liar if I say I don’t But I’ll quit my man I’m a liar if I say I won’t I’ve been your slave, baby Ever since I’ve been your babe I’ve been your slave Ever since I’ve been your babe But before I’ll be your dogI’ll see you in your grave My man wouldn’t give me no breakfast Wouldn’t give me no dinner Squawked about me supper then he put me outdoors Had the nerve to lay a matchbox on my clothes I didn’t have so many But I had a long, long way to go”

In the first few pages of Chapter Three, Kingsolver talks about heirloom vegetables and says “these titles stand for real stories.” What is meant by the title is heirloom plants give off seeds that end up being saved and used for many generations (112). Those seeds have history behind them; family stories that span over several years. For example, on page 144 Kingsolver talked about this heirloom seed exchange in Iowa where one of the founders’ grandfather left a pink tomato plant that his parents brought from Bavaria in the 1870s. The seeds are comparable to a family heirloom. Both get handed down from generation to generation and have a story of what the meaning of the object is and how it all got started.

As the second part of this reflection paper, I selected a book ‘A Short History of Disease’ by Sean Martin. He is a writer and filmmaker also known for his other famous books like The Knights Templar, Alchemy and alchemists, the Gnostics. His films include Lanterna Magicka: Bill Douglas & the secret history of cinema. The most alluring thing which conceives me to cull this book is a history of the disease, as a medical professional, it's always tantalizing to know from where all these begins and this book reaches up to my expectations as it started from the first ever recorded disease in the history of mankind. He isn’t lying when he say this a history of the disease. He starts from the earliest bacteria to evolve on the earth, long before there was anything around to infect. This book is divided into seven chapters, each chapter describes the history of diseases in a particular era. Chapter One: Prehistory, Chapter Two: Antiquity, Chapter Three: The Dark and Middle Ages, Chapter Four: The New World, Chapter

This book is about a girl named Maria who is helping her mother cook at Christmastime, She is helping her make Tamales. Maria felt so grown up while she was helping her mother, When she walks away for a minute, Maria decides she wants to try on her mother’s wedding ring that she had laying on the table. She puts it on her thumb, and when her mother returns, she quickly begins to help once again. Once family arrived at their house, Maria was playing with her cousins Dolores, Teresa, and Danny. She looked down at her thumb where she had recently put the ring, and realized that it wasn't there. Maria told her cousins what had happened, and they all went down to the tamales. There were so many of them, but she knew that the ring had to be

Chapter seven opens with Hiram and his Grampa driving to and through the "Hillburn land and Hillburn crops" (68). Hiram's grandfather begins talking about Harlan and how much his grandson reminds him of his father. Here, the readers are presented to a softer side of ol' Grampa Hillburn. To this point of the book, Hiram's grandfather and father fought like cats and dogs. It was seemingly like they hated each other. Perhaps it is his older age and the realization of the fraility in lifem, but Grampa admits to Hiram that he misses his son and doesn't really know why they fell apart like they did. After their sentimental moment, the two men travel to their old fishing spot on the Yazoo River so that Hiram will be able to find it on his own.

Craig Mullaney definitely made many challenges for himself and accepted challenges from others with no questions asked. Being the thriving Valedictorian of his high school class and earning other prestigious accolades he stood out from the other entire student. But at West Point, Mullaney would be intertwined with hundreds of other classmates with the same, if not more achievements, making it seemingly impossible to be any kind of a predominant student.

Social determinants such as poverty or location can make a population susceptible to transmission of diseases. In the earlier part of the twentieth century the rural American South was plagued with hookworms. The worms, which live in the bowel, were passed by feces into poorly managed waste systems. They were transmitted to the host, usually children through bare feet. In summer month’s poorer children were bare foot. The transmission was stopped not by putting shoes on the children but by building better sanitary “privies” or outhouses (Dinsmore, 1912). By containing fecal matter the hookworms were contained. In rural areas containment of fecal matter also controls typhoid fever and amebic dysentery.

The author's purpose for writing this article was to inform people of The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, and show how life in the late 1700’s contributed to the outbreak. In the beginning of the passage it explains the unsanitary life of people back then. Also it explains specifically Philidelphia life. Philadelphia at the time was too overcrowded, and the market constantly having rotten food did not help with the already unclean city. The unsanitary life the passage explained is the reason for the large Yellow Fever

Mircea Eliade focuses on the structure of myths and the place that myths hold in societies and different religious traditions. In Chapter 1, Eliade aims to differentiate between his predecessors and himself about the meaning of myth. Eliade describes myth as a true story that is sacred, exemplary, and significant. He stresses this explanation of myth because in common culture myths are understood as being false. Mircea Eliade finds that myth can best be defined as, “myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of beginnings” (5).

While others, were only effected by direct contact. It was thought to have been sustainable by even touching clothing or other such items of the infected. Conditions of the fourteenth century were also a contributing factor. Famine had been an arising issue due to the number of overpopulation. Because of this, their immune systems began to weaken. “Europeans were susceptible to disease because many people lived in crowded surroundings in an era when personal hygiene was not considered important” (Dowling). The cities were unsanitary and littered with germs, making it easier to sustain such diseases. Unhealthy habits were conducted and medical advances had not yet been made. Doctors themselves had not known what to advise. No prescriptions had worked. There was no cure to what was happening. Most were not even aware of what was impending upon them. Anything that could would be tried, in hopes of living. People were becoming desperate.