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Thesis For The Ghost Map

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The “The Ghost Map” is a book written by Steven Johnson. In the book, the author explains to us why urban planning is necessary to prevent deadly diseases, such as the deadly cholera outbreak. In 1854, Cholera seized London with incredible force. A capital of more than 2 million people, London had just become as a one of the first modern cities in the society. But lacking the foundation necessary to sustain its dense population - garbage extraction, clean water sources, sewer systems - the city has grown to be the ideal breeding ground for a terrifying epidemic no one understands how to cure. As their next-door-neighbors begin dying, two men are driven to action: Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is great, and Dr. John Snow, whose beliefs about contagion have been rejected by the scientific community, but who is convinced that he knows how the disease is had spread. “The Ghost Map” records the …show more content…

In a success of multidisciplinary thinking, Steven Johnson observes the plague from the microbial level to the human level to the urban level. Cleverly clarifying past histories of the spread of disease, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, the writer, Steven Johnson shows an explanation of how it has molded the world we live in. Eventhough, this reseach has been recorded in the past; Steven Johnson has made these historic chronicals colorful, compleling and accessible to everyday people. Now todays civilization can see that urban ling isn’t as simple as it may seem. It requires alot of engineering to provide it’s citizens with a healthy life. I was very impressed with the way Dr. Snow did his research and his dedications and persistance in proving why London’s neighborhoods were in danger. I agree with Johnson’s thought that Dr. Snow discovery is victory of

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“What world does a dead individual belong to?”, quoted in paragraph four of "The Ghost Map." "The Night-Soil Men" is an excerpt from the novel, "The Ghost Map," writing by Steven B. Johnson. The time is set around the 1850’s of London, Europe. In London, this considered to be one the most unhygienic cities in the world. The excerpt from "The Night-Soil Men" has many examples of literary elements, figurative language, and rhyme scheme.

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The Ghost map was a well put together book that shed light on a past problem that has changed many things about the way we live our lives today. Without the contributions of John Snow and Edwin Chadwik it might have taken many more years to figure out how this epidemic was spreading. In addition, many more people would have died. Because I am a very visual person the hardest part of reading The Ghost Map was while reading it, I visualized how it may have looked and smelled in London during this time period and it was not very pleasant. There were a few times I had to put the book down for a while and think about trees and birds to get the idea of London in the 1800’s out of my head.

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To add to this most people living the urban part of NYC didn't even have an outhouse, they would most likely dig a trench that leads outside. This added much more filth and stench to their alleys. These dreadful events appearing good things began to come out of them, NYC passed building codes to promote safety and health. The city of New York came and cleaned up miles of these streets leading to the decrease of disease and death. George Waring and Mayor Strong are the reasons the urban cities were saved from filth and

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The Ghost Map Part One: Preface 1. What was the main point of the reading? (at least one in-text quote required) - In this first part of the book we are introduced to many key characters and terms that play a big role throughout the rest of the book. We are taken back to London in the year of 1854.

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Writer and best-selling author, Richard Preston, in his non-fiction thriller, The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story, tells about the origins and incidents involving major filoviruses, such as Ebola and Marburg. Preston highlights multiple cases of the people who dealt and came with close contact to the viruses, from the possible contraction of Marburg by Monet, to Nurse Mayinga’s case of Ebola Zaire, to the biohazard operation at the Ebola-infested monkey house in Reston. Through this, he influences the public’s view on the viruses with an informative, but dramatized tone. Although the depictions strike convincing fear into many hearts, there are inaccuracies that blur the true reality of Ebola, especially with its symptoms and method of transmission.

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In Cataclysm, we see a more traditional response to the Black Death in central Italy, with the Church playing a more dominant role. This is in stark contrast to the Spanish Flu, which had a much more modern and scientific response in Britain, with the government and medical experts leading research and treatments. This difference in approach is reflected in the two films, with Cataclysm relying more heavily on first-hand accounts and traditional imagery to portray the Black Death, and The Flu that Killed 50 Million relying more heavily on modern techniques such as interviews, archival footage and current medical understanding of the Spanish Flu to tell its

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Conclusion In conclusion, the “Parable of the Sower” portrays cities as places to avoid rather than being sanctuaries due to the lack of safety and the adverse influences of corporations. However, the novel does provide some hope by proving that if we start realizing problems and planning ahead, then, cities could change and become more livable in the future. As more people move to urban areas, the way we plan, manage and develop our cities will be fundamental in creating a fair, safe, healthy and sustainable

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Consequently, pest-houses were a place developed to quarantine people with contagious diseases. (Shi & Singh, 2015.p.85) Moreover, both these institutions played equally imperative roles

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Introducing the article, London claims, “The earthquake shook down in San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of walls and chimneys.” This clearly introduces his first thought of the earthquake, and what part of the city meant the most to him. Following the topic sentence, London continues the paragraph describing the infrastructure of the city and how each type of building no longer stands. Businesses, Buildings, and homes are the fundamentals that create a living city, and Jack London is specific in how the earthquake affected these aspects in San Francisco. In addition, London is specific with the city smoke and the conflagration.

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One of the biggest summer nuisance would be the mosquito, but more specifically the Ades aegypti mosquito. The Aedes aegypti is the vector for yellow fever and the cause of the numerous deaths. In her book The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic the Shaped Our History, Molly Caldwell Crosby presents the idea that the mosquito is not just the only reason an epidemic occurred in the 18th century. This story accounts for the disease that broke out across the world and nearly destroyed almost all of North America’s population, which some believe could have been avoided by simple quarantine analysis and sanitary methods.

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I do agree with the author’s idea. The reason that I agree with the author is because his ideas reflect how regular people whose lives are disrupted by the plague evolve through living with this new evil amongst them. When people are encountered with evil they react differently. One example of this that I liked was from father Paneloux’s sermon in which he says, “Thus from the dawn of recorded history the scourge of God has humbled the proud heart and laid low those who hardened themselves against Him. Ponder this well, my friends, and fall on your knees” (Camus 102)

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175 Words | 1 Pages

In Albert Camus's "The Plague", Camus describes a fictional plague that ravaged the Arabian city of Oran during the early 20th century. The zoonotic plague detailed began as a disease that plagued rats and quickly transmitted to humans; causing the spread of the disease at a rapid rate (Camus, The Plague, 13). The disease is similar to the bubonic plague in symptoms and fatality but does not have the same treatment as this familiar disease. Camus's account of this fictional doomsday scenario speaks to the cultural phenomena of having an obsession with the fear of the unknown. As discussed in recitation, we, as a society, are intrigued by this genre in literature, TV shows, and movies because we, ourselves, have never been affected by those

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1632 Words | 7 Pages

Spreading from individual to individual, this catastrophic disease has taken so many beautiful souls— both young and old. As we are aware, pandemics and epidemics have been and will continue to be a global struggle, indefinitely. Showing no mercy upon its victims, these deadly diseases have taken a countless number of

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To do this, he uses the school of empiricism, to set the human characters made test subjects into their psychological plague landscape. Jules David Law argues that British empiricism "emphasizes the epistemological primacy of our sense data" (IX). This sensory data can be seen through the empirical obsessions of H.F. and his bills, charts, and governmental ordinances: the physical records of the plague. So, rather than just theorizing or reasoning the immaterial ideas of the nature of man, empiricism, allows him to use the plague environment as a physical representation of that theory and observe the actual

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For the Discussion Assignment of this week, I chose the Haitian story "Ghosts" by Edwidge Danticat. I chose this story because it shook me a little. It tells about the poor conditions of Haitian slums such as Bel Air in Port-au-Prince, "the Baghdad of Haiti" (Danticat, 2008, p. 1), and in particular the disadvantaged life of Pascal Dorien, a young boy from a good family who wanted to report the rude situation of his neighborhood by becoming a radio journalist. Unfortunately, the tough criminal situation in there, melted with the daily routine of his parents ' restaurant, where local gang bosses used to chill, dragged him in a vicious circle. He has been charged with several crimes unfairly and then released.

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