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An essay on an outbreak of cholera in my area
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An essay on an outbreak of cholera in my area
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Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, depicts the Cholera outbreak in London in 1854, the largest city that has been built in the world. The book shows a path towards a scientific solution. This book focuses on a doctor, John Snow, and his search for a way to stop the epidemic that was occurring. Even though Dr. Snow had discovered some theories on his own, he also had the help of a Reverend, Henry Whitehead. They are searching for a new theory on how disease spreads, but their community did not want to accept their findings. Johnson’s central argument is that in order to treat a disease, one must understand how the disease functions. While the science community did not believe Dr. Snow’s findings at the time, Johnson’s obsession with how people …show more content…
Now this stench has left a scar in London’s history: “No extended description of London from that period failed to mention the stench of the city.” People in the city thought that the stench was the reason why the was murdered every three or four years. The government of course reacted by passing the Nuisances Removal and Contagious Diseases Prevention Act to empty out people’s cesspools and pour all the waste into the river, because if waste was taken out of the road then it would smell less. Consequently, the waste in the river actually influenced more outbreaks of chorea. There was only one person who believed but was turned down by authorities that the cholera was originated by the Water-John Snow. Now, surrounded by the cesspool was an extremely popular water pump where a great chunk of people would go to. With the water contaminated from the cesspool, 10% of the neighborhood died in one week, but thankfully people fled, or else it would’ve been more people who have died. John Snow headed up to the place where it all started, thinking that people will finally believe him that the cholera was in the water and not in the air. With the help of a local minister, Henry Whitehead, he found out that people who drank from the pump were getting sick, and those who were not, weren’t getting sick. And so, a map was created to demonstrate that when people were getting away from the …show more content…
He is also trying to show how even unrealistic reasoning will persist in the people's ideals in how the disease infects. He questions, “How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories?” It is hard for Johnson to simply move on from the fact that Snow’s theories were not widely accepted, and due to this fact, there seems to be a bit bias towards the subject. In a way, I can connect to what he is talking about. For example, in the television show, The Office, there was an episode where Dwight Shrute is giving a lecture on fire safety, however, no one listens. Consequently, when the fire does happen, people are freaking out and don’t know how to react. Similarly, in the book, Dr. Snow was portrayed as a person who society ignored even though he was wise enough to teach London’s population. The author’s general purpose is to discuss the biology that Dr. Snow and other scientists had then, and compare it to the science that modern scientists work with. Johnson does not really have one specific audience, but he mostly addressing a scientific based
Plagues and Peoples written by William H. McNeill follows the patterns of epidemics and endemics within human history. It is within this history that McNeill finds parallels between diseases and humans in the forms of microparasitism and macroparasitism. Merely from the title, McNeill gives equal importance to viruses and humankind. In several instances, humans behave the same way viruses, bacteria, and parasites do in order to survive and to compete. Surprisingly enough, McNeill’s overarching theme can be summarized using his last sentence, asserting that “Infectious disease which antedated the emergence of humankind will last as long as humanity itself, and will surely remain, as it has been hitherto, one of the fundamental parameters and
The Eleventh Plague is one of those books you MUST finish in 4 days or less because the story sticks like glue to your mind and you won’t stop theory-crafting until you give in and read it to the end these are reasons why. Eleventh Plague has a well-written plot which is essential to any story and it is back up by the fascinating character development and detailed writing. Eleventh Plague has a great plot. At the start, it shows Stephen and his Father trekking along an abandoned road when suddenly, they spot a Canadian military airplane. It then leads on to show the two of them living in the plane for a few days until a group of slavers also find this plane. Stephens father has a fight with the slavers
The book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of the cholera outbreak that took place in England during the medieval era. During this time, London became popular, causing it to become one of the most populous urban cities in England. However, it suffered from overcrowding, a large lower class, and little health regulations. As a result, living conditions and water supply were not the cleanest, and many died from the disease cholera. Though this epidemic led to many deaths/illnesses during it’s time, it has proven to be helpful and important to public health today. Some public health advancements that have occurred as a result include healthier, cleaner, and longer lives lived.
Colonial living in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the New World was both diverse and, in many cases, proved deadly through such avenues as disease, Native American attacks, a lack of proper medical treatment, and disastrous weather conditions. Even through all of these hardships, the first colonists persevered, doing their best to see the blessings in their lives and create a better life for their children through all of the uncertainties. Nothing, it seems, in the original colonies was set in stone except for the fact that they never knew what the next day would hold in store. Everything, even small mishaps, had dramatic impacts on the social, economic, and political aspects of their lives. These circumstances, however, were more strongly influenced by geography than class position, unlike what many were used to in England. How population, economics, disease, and climate played into the social conditions of early colonists is truly a story for the ages. Whether people were seeking land, religious freedom, or money and profits, everyone worked to a certain extent just to survive, let alone thrive, in the wilderness that was North America at that time.
In Henrik Ibsen’s, An Enemy of the People, Ibsen presents the reader with a town on the brink of disaster. The tragic reality is that there is a cesspool underneath the spa, the town’s main economic asset and tourist attraction. Not only is the cesspool a danger to the economic health of the town, but it is also a danger to the health of the town’s citizens. The disaster the city faces is caused by the citizen’s unwillingness and inability of the city leaders to deal with the tragedy of the cesspool.
The rail market continued to grow and by the 1860’s all major cities within the United States were connected by rail. The main diseases that showed the most virulence during the time were cholera, yellow fever and consumption, now known as tuberculosis. The 9th census mortality data showed that 1 out 7 deaths from disease were caused by tuberculosis and 1 out of 24 disease deaths were resulting from cholera. . Until the 1870s the general consensus of the spread of disease through population was still the primitive idea that it came from the individual and not specifically the pathogen.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The traumatizing scenes a man experiences during a plague probably haunt him throughout his life – if he manages to survive. In Jack London’s 1912 novella, “The Scarlet Plague”, London brilliantly narrates the life of an elderly man, “Granser” who managed to survive the lethal hands of the plague that decimated millions sixty years ago, reverting the once “colossal civilization” to cave-man existence. (16) Granser recounts the emergence of the Scarlet Plague and its catastrophic impact on society as he tells his savage grandsons the world before and after the epidemic. London’s use of imagery offers a graphic appeal to open the reader’s eye and ears to the physical pandemonium of the plague, evoking the reader’s soul to the themes the plague symbolizes: reclamation of
By the 1840’s high rates of disease were ascribed to the housing many of New York’s poverty-stricken immigrants lived in. Fear spread that while disease was rooted in the polluted living conditions of New York’s poorer communities, disease could easily spread to the more well off citizens too. Public health officials realized that the city’s soiled streets and polluted sewers were a health risk to all New Yorkers. In the mid-nineteenth century, New York possessed a primitive sewage system. Poorly planned sewers spanned the city, but most citizens’ homes did not connect to these pipes. Instead, most New Yorkers relied on outdoor outhouses and privies. Because of the high levels of unmanaged waste, epidemics of infectious diseases were commonplace in New York. The city battled outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and tuberculosis. In 1849, a rash of cholera struck the city, killing more than five thousand people. A wave of typhoid in the mid-1860’s resulted in a similar amount of deaths. Port cities and transportation hubs, like New York, were especially prone to outbursts of infectious diseases because of the high volume of travelers that passed through the city. Americans realized that they were contracting and dying from infectious diseases at an alarming rate, but weren’t entirely sure of why or how. (Web, par. 17,
The uncertainty of the disease could be discovered through predictable patterns that made the polluting actions detectable for the invisible bacteria within the urban population of the London. In recent decades, England had experienced considerable urbanization. The poor lived in the section of cities that make unsanitary seem like a kind term. Disease and epidemics were much more prevalent in the area surrounded by the poor. The poor were frequently blamed for their living conditions and eventually the disease. So, it is important to have sanitation and cleanliness all over the places. For instance, today’s the nursing students. Pure air is the single most important focus for a nurse in caring for patients, eventually leads to the modern world’s facilities and advance technologies of ventilating rooms and evacuating sewers of vaporous matter. This may be helpful in reducing the disease spread and deaths. But it actually does help prevent the spread of the disease today. As we can see that the people’s average living age has been increase than what it was before because of the cure and
Steve Berlin Johnson published a nonfiction novel in 2006 called The Ghost Map which discusses various cholera outbreaks in Victorian London. Cholera was first believed by the majority of people, including physicians and scientists, to be spread through a poisonous atmosphere; this is called the miasma theory. When John Snow began to say contaminated water was the cause, he was continuously put down by the scientific community for lacking proof. By describing John Snow’s attempts to refute the miasma theory and prove that cholera is spread through water contamination, Johnson shows that most scientific discoveries are made through hours upon hours of work rather than a single breakthrough.
Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made. New York:
In 1854, London was the leading industrialized city in the world with a population of more than 2 million without an infrastructure that can support the residents. It was inevitable that an infectious disease outbreak such as Cholera can occur and overwhelm city officials and residents. Due to Snow’s critical thinking going against the norm, he tracked the source of cholera and developed a prevention strategy. As Johnson (p.160) discusses, despite all Snow’s skeptics, he recommended the removal of the Broad Street pump and the outbreak quickly subsided. Considering the time, Snow gave a new perspective on how disease was spread. He used evidence based knowledge to challenge the efforts put in prevention and treatment of a disease. According to Johnson (p. 146), Snow’s ability to observe urban life combined with his medical
As the days went by and the number of deaths began to increase, the Board of Health in London began to improve people’s living conditions by creating the indoor restroom, This, however, caused more problems for the people of London, due to the lack of a proper sewage system, “London needed a citywide sewage system that could remove waste products from houses in a reliable and sanitary fashion,...,The problem was one of jurisdiction, not execution,”(Page 117). London didn’t have a place where the sewers could lead off to which keep the disease spreading when people used the restroom. After months of battling the type of disease London was faced with, Mr. Snow convinced the Board of Health to remove the water pump that was on Board Street. By getting rid of this pump, Mr. Snow helped stop major outbreaks from recurring, “The removal of the pump handle was a historical turning point, and not because it marked the end of London’s most explosive epidemic,..., It marks a turning point in the battle between urban man and Vibrio cholera, because for the first time a public institution had made an informed intervention into a cholera outbreak based on a scientifically sound theory of the disease.”(Page 162- 163). This marked the end of the London epidemic and how the world of science
“I think a rat just climbed up my leg, Dad. And I’ve got fleas, too.” “John, there’s all this Black Death and all you care about is a few fleas and a rat.
This book follows an esteemed doctor and a local clergyman who, together, are the heart of an investigation to solve the mystery of the cholera epidemic. In 1854 London was ravaged by a terrible outbreak of cholera, where within the span of mere weeks over five hundred people in the Soho district died. London, at the time, was a city of around two and a half million people, all crammed into a small area with no system for sewage removal. With overflowing cesspools, improper drainage of all the human and animal waste, and no system for guaranteed clean water, the people of London were in a bad state. They were essentially dumping all of their feces into their drinking water supply, a perfect environment for cholera to thrive.