The Ghost is an interesting novel. I never really gave much thought about how cities developed and the importance of having a form of recycling. Reading about just how nasty London was had me wondering what it would be like if we still lived like that? I didn’t realize how old the concept of recycling was and how Rome had built its city from the old ruins. I also didn’t know that the Netherlands had the largest population in the world (Johnson 5) and that it had grown from putting waste back into the soil. I thought it was interesting how everything excretes waste. However what is waste to one thing is beneficial for something else. Algae that reside with the coral reefs “waste” oxygen but the coral uses the waste in it’s metabolic cycle (Johnson 7). As a human, I don’t consider oxygen to be waste but to the algae it is.
It was pretty disgusting when Johnson talked about how human feces just piled up. Artificial ponds were made from urine and human dung piled up as tall as houses. A lot of waste was thrown into the water creating breeding grounds for chlorea in the first place.
I didn’t know much about chlorea before reading this book and I think it’s kind of scary just how fast it reproduces, given that it is in the right environment. It reminds me of a biological weapon. However, I thought it was amusing how many thought it was in the air and how no one really believed in the bacteria theory. I guessed I probably wouldn’t have believed in something that I couldn’t see with my own two eyes.
It’s interesting how Whitehead, along with many others, are trying to figure out why more people are dying in the “clean” houses instead of the “dirty” houses. Sherlock Holmes had a more easier job because he had evidence that could be seen. Whitehead, however, is trying to prove something that can’t be seen with the naked eye. He uses his knowledge of London – like Holmes – to his advantage and he observes the patterns of the disease.
Another funny thing was how everyone put in their two cents about how to cure chlorea (spray the air with air freshener). Back then anyone could be published in the paper but all of the useless articles buried those with solutions that actually made since.
