The Ghost Map By Steven Johnson

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

Air pollution such as black smoke caused health issues such as respiratory disease. Extreme example of air pollution like Pittsburgh had “people’s hands and faces were constantly grimy, clean collars quickly acquired a thin layer of soot”. Besides black smoke, animal waste was another essential result for air pollution. According to statistics, “the 15,000 horses in Rochester, New York, left enough waste in a year to cover an acre of land with a layer of 175 feet high”. These horrify numbers happened due to the blindly industrialization during the Gilded Age, and people allowed all of those waste and destruction to develop for their own benefits. Household sewage and industrial pollutants polluted the water people used for showering and drinking. While we were destroying the environment, the nature was taking its greatest revenge to all human

In the horror/mystery book Took: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn, Daniel, his little sister Erica, and their parents had just moved to Pennsylvania from Connecticut. The rumors about their new house are that every seventy years a girl disappears and another girl appears from what Brody Mason has told Daniel and Erica . Before they moved, their parents gave Erica a doll which she instantly admires. One afternoon Daniel and Erica go on a hike in the woods. Erica failed to keep her doll in her arms and loses it. The next day Erica is missing and another girl appears. What readers would find interesting is that Daniel never stopped believing that he will find his sister. If you are interested in a horror/mystery book that will keep you on the

I chose to read The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World. I found this book especially compelling because most people have never even heard of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854, nor its impacts on the cleanliness of today’s society. In his book, Stephen Johnson explained how in 1854, everyone living in London thought that all disease was spread through foul-smelling air (miasma). John Snow, a local doctor in London, wanted to know why so many people were dying of cholera, and others were not. He was the one that originally discovered that the epidemic was surrounded around a water pump on Broad Street, and Henry Whitehead was the one who proved that he right

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

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is a very detailed account of Dr. John Snow’s remarkable discovery of how Cholera was spread in the 19th century. Johnson chronicles the everyday life of the average english man and woman, and in doing so, reveals the intricacies of changing the way a society thinks and responds to change. The Ghost Map reflects the correlation of the spread of Cholera and social status in 19th century England. It also shows prevailing scientific beliefs at the time and their effect on medicine, accounts Dr. John Snow’s early involvement in Epidemiology and finally, it proves that the perception of diseases were forever changed, due to the work of John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead.

He linked the common illness cholera to people whom drank from the wells. He observed those getting ill and which areas and pumps they drank from and recorded it on a map, he was then able to establish all those getting ill were in fact drinking from the same pump, and consequently in 1854 John Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street pump and ceased the epidemic of Cholera in Soho, London

Why acknowledge history? The solution is because we essentially must to achieve access to the laboratory of human involvement. In the essay “Haunted America”, Patricia Nelson takes a truly various and remarkably gallant stance on United States history. Through the recounting of the White/Modoc war in “Haunted America,” she brings to light the complexity and confusion of the White/Indian conflicts that is often missing in much of the history we read. Her account of the war, with the faults of both Whites and Indians revealed, is an unusual alternative to the stereotypical “Whites were good; Indians were bad” or the reverse stand point that “Indians were good; Whites were bad” conclusions that many historians reach. Limerick argues that a very brutal and bloody era has been simplified and romanticized, reducing the lives and deaths of hundreds to the telling of an uncomplicated story of “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”.

Ultimately, the week of the Broad Street outbreak impacted the ways cities organized themselves. Solutions for problems such as cholera helped urbanization in advancing sanitation standards. The Great Stink of 1858 forced authorities to confront the

Steven Johnson is an accomplished author who tells a compelling, well written and informative book, The Ghost Map, which tells an intriguing story of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London while at the same time provides a wide array of information surrounding the thoughts and beliefs of the majority of the current society.

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

Ghostly representations of “the other” imagine a social evil that has not been put to rest. These images reoccur in the Western canon, marking the persistence of slavery long after its abolition. Haunting, ghosts and skeletons in Benito Cereno act as a vehicle through which the suppressed return to the stage with a message. The ghosts carry with them all that the imperialists wanted to control, including emotions, and more precisely, the emotions of the oppressed. I argue that ghosts and skeletons comprise an area of tension in which the appearance of the “other” reveals that the dominant party’s control is incomplete. Yet, the presence is merely ghostly due to the constant policing and lack of respect for the Other. These ghosts also break through the boundaries of the dominant culture’s paradigms and identities (Harpham 17), signaling potential political crisis. This text signals the fear of the retaliation of the Other through ghostly representations by projecting on to the other, their own identities of brutality and irrationality. “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville overturns the racist images of the colonized by relocating evil in the order of slavery. Hauntings carry the perspectives and powers of the slaves by preserving the dead amidst the living and the past amidst the present, they muddle up the concept of time and therefore defy the Western dream of complete control.

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.

In “The Journal of the Plague Year,” H.F praises the power of government to regulate urban spaces, shut up houses, and impose quarantines on potentially dangerous Londoners. However, he also pushes back against this authority by critiquing the inefficiency of the practice and expressing empathy for the people it harms. H.F’s contradictory attitude is also displayed in his treatment of the bills and documents used to control the public’s access to information. While H.F occasionally enforces the regulations of these papers, he also questions their accuracy. Observing the lives of everyday people, H.F gathers personal anecdotes and experiences that suggest the plague cannot be quantified by charts and statistics. Lastly, while H.F initially