The Ghost Map 57-109 (Lumia Zaman)

As Cholera was spreading throughout London there were numerous theories of it. It eventually got down to two groups. The first one was the contagionist and the second one was Miasmist. The contagonist believed that cholera was contagious and it spread through soil or other medium. The Miasmic believed that Cholera was caused by rotten smell from the air. But majority of the people believed in the Miasmic theory as it made sense to them and it was easier to believe.

John Snow, anesthetics got very interested with Cholera. Though he was a very good doctor and had a position in the upper class London society still he was more into cure any disease than just be in the formalities of the upper society. Snow did not believe in any of the two theories about cholera.

He started to trace back the sequence of what was happening . He came to realize that water was the reason for Cholera. He started requesting records from the doctors about the patients who died and from what pump they got their water. Soon Snow came to realization that it was caused by water.

Whitehead played a huge role on this part. He was curious about Cholera too as he knew all the people very well and their death was hurtful for him. But he was confused what to do. This part of the book also questions Whitehead’s reason to stay in that area when everyone was leaving.

Ghost Map second post- Rachel Kassabian

As the case for the cause of the Cholera epidemic comes closer and closer to being solved by a man named John Snow, everyday people in London continue to make conditions worse. While most people were concluding that the Cholera epidemic was being caused by air particles, Snow determined that the drinking water was the problem. In this book Dr. Snow is acting as a type of Sherlock Holmes character by going out and researching after formulating questions. He made his own experiments such as the contaminated water and alcohol trial. Field research was also very important in this aspect of detective work. The facts were that cholera was affecting people in certain neighborhoods and less in others and that air can not stick to one confined place, confirming, in Snow’s mind at least, that the epidemic was not an airborne disease. He tested the water in certain areas and in all determined that the part of the river where one lives is directly related to catching the disease as well as congestion in the area. 

Ghost Map 1-55 Rachel Kassabian

In the first 55 page of Ghost Map, we are introduced to an epidemic that is affecting London. Johnson describes London at the time as being a very crowded and dirty place to be living. Cesspools would overflow with human excrement making it easy for one to deduce that the smell of London was horrible with such filth. Development in the cities had not been well planned out and concepts of design which we take for granted today, such as sewage systems, were absent.

The Cholera epidemic hit London and thousands were dying especially in Soho. Nobody was really sure what was causing this outbreak and most presumptions were wrong, such as the theory that it came from the bad smell of the city. 

The Ghost Map 57-109 {Simone Gaulman}

As the chlorea starts spreading, we are introduced to Dr John Snow. He also determined to figure out the cause of the chlorea. He doesn’t believe that the bacteria is spread through the air but thinks that it is spread through congestion (drinking contaminated water). He first discovered a form of anesthetic – ether. At first ether wasn’t used properly because users of ether didn’t take into account room temperature and how it effected the ether vapor (Johnson 64). In spite of complications ether was useful until chloroform – a better form of anesthetic – was founded.

After his success of anesthetics Dr Snow became engrossed in chlorea-related researched. He introduced his theory of the spreading of disease through congestion but not many accepted it whole heartedly. But it would explain why only certain parts of London were dying and its neighbors weren’t. At the time many were ignorant to concept of bacteria and thought that the disease was air-borne. The chlora bacteria was supposedly spreading because of the air in certain neighborhoods. To Snow it just didn’t make sense. He examined samples of water from different pumps and was surprised to find out that the contaminated water was clear and appeared harmless. He put alcohol in it and drank the chlorea-infected sample. Because alcohol kills bacteria he drank it unscathed.

He learned that southern areas of London that were being supplied contaminated water were dying off, while those who lived in northern areas that were supplied cleaner water remained fine. This fact continued to convince him of the water theory.

The bacteria spread so fast because of the large amount of people packed together in the small city. When people were spread apart sickness wasn’t spread so quickly because people weren’t in constant contact with one another. But with rooms averaging five people apiece and workers eating in the same area they went to the bathroom it’s no surprise chlorea came about.

A fact I thought was interesting was how the Great Exhibition of 1851 was briefly brought up. When we were studying the Great Exhibition for the guided research paper, we learned how many new inventions went on debut during the Exhibition. Toilets that flushed were introduced at the Exhibition and many were fascinated by it. However, the flushing only cause more water to contaminated.

The Ghost Map 1-55 {Simone Gaulman}

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.

Ghost Map- Biological and Nuclear Threats to Cities

In Ghost Map Johnson devotes the final chapter to examining the threat of biological and nuclear terrorism that urban, metropolitan centers face with a focus on the role that forensics, epidemiology, public health, and computers might play in countering the threat. Potential threats to cities will take the form of a threat that specifically exploits the density of cities in order to harm us and create the most physical damage, with the least amount of effort, and provoke the most amount of fear. The revolution in information technology is partly the cause for the increase in potential threats that cities face. The information revolution is characterized by the shift from physical, weighted information, such as newspapers and books, to weightless information, such as online journals and newspapers. But it isn’t the information revolution alone that accounts for the increase in the potential threat to cities, but rather the shift from majority of the world population living in rural areas, to living in densely populated cities and urban areas. The increase in the density of metropolitan centers makes asymmetric warfare more deadly than before. Even though we have more advanced technology at our disposal to combat disease, disease today is more lethal because our planet is considerably more interconnected and densely populated than it was during the Broad Street cholera epidemic. Snow confronted the “fundamental perceptual limit of space” whereas we face the “perceptual limit of time”, in that we are tracking diseases that we can’t see because they don’t exist yet. It is vital that millions of dollars are devoted to research in the field of forensics, epidemiology, public health, and computers in order to prepare for the emergence of a future outbreak, epidemic, asymmetric warfare, and biological terrorism because if it appears and starts spreading it will have devasting effects due to our densely populated urban centers and our interconnected world due to air travel. We have to have a continued commitment to public health institutions, commit to developing public health infrastructures in the developing world, and pattern recognition, local knowledge, and disease mapping remains essential. Countering the threat of nuclear terrorism has proven more difficult because there is no way to disengage nuclear and explosive weapons once they have been detonated and because of the breakup of the breakup of the Soviet Union, an increase in technological expertise and Iran’s renewed commitment to a nuclear program. The key to countering the threat of nuclear terrorism is to continue to advance our technology for detection, that nation-states continue to ban the building of new nuclear weapons, and they work on eliminating the ones already in place. The threat of biological terrorism can be countered by a continued commitment among nation-states to ban the state use and development of biological weapons. These are possible roles that forensics, epidemiology, public health, and computers can play in countering the threat of biological and nuclear terrorism but there are simpler solutions that are often overlooked but vital in countering these threats; the acknowledgment of the underlying problem, listening to science and not superstition, the rational application of the scientific method to public-health matters, and we must keep a channel open for dissenting voices to prevent being under the spell of a theory and over determination. Early detection and planning for the emergence of a potential threat that would take advantage of the density of cities is key to countering the threat because “the greatest risk of deliberately planned urban epidemics is that we won’t recognize the outbreak until it is too late for a vaccine to stop the spread of the disease”. Time is of the essence in countering the threats to densely populated areas because the epidemic can spread quickly due to the interconnectivity of our world due to air travel and the density of our urban centers. In order to combat modern threats to cities we would have to employ the 21^st century version of Snow’s map: “making visible patterns in the daily flow of lives and deaths that constitute metabolism of a city, rising and falling fortunes of the sick and the healthy.”

Ghost Map 1-55 — Zack Long

In Pages 1-55 of the book “Ghost Map” by Steven Johnson talked about the epidemic in London where millions of people died from an outbreak of Cholera. The reason why they had this outbreak was because of an unsanitary living condition. For example, their sewage system wasn’t that great that they’d hire people know as Night Soil Men to clean the pits below the houses of the waste. As the population was growing, it became harder to remove the waste from people’s homes which eventually lead to the waste being transported out through the drinking water thus only spreading the Cholera when people would drink from the contaminated water

Ghost Maps (P-111-188)

The third portion of the book from P-111 up p-188, boring and interesting to read at the same time. Just like the first reading assignment (p-1-55), the book continues to provides interesting and boring details at the same time. This portion of the reading starts of by describing the steps, which the British government took in an attempt to curb the outbreak of cholera. Instead of taking proper precautions, the British government instead decided to bleach the sidewalks and the streets in an effort to cover up the cholera problem it was facing. And, in this portion of the reading, we are introduced to a character named Edwin Chadwick, who is given credit for organizing peoples concept of modern government, and what role it should play. Chadwick, proposed a plan which stated that in order to clean up the cholera problems the city needed to get rid of the infected population, even if it meant poisoning an entire group of people. Chadwick’s plan, didn’t do much to help the situation, instead it made it worse, as the infection spread from a small portion within the city to the outside. Upon realizing the problem, the government finally implemented a better plan, which drastically improved the public health problem. Although the right choice was finally made, it look a long time to undo the damage which was already created. In the end, it goes to prove that when it comes to making important decisions, it is better to do some research than to make haste and quick decisions.

The Ghost Map- 1-55

In the first part of Ghost Map we learn about the Victorian Age in London and how terrible the environment and the situation is. I can relate this reading to when we watched that short video clip on Victorian Age. Johnson does a great job at giving us reality in this book. The Environment people had to live in was horrible, there was trash, smell and it was just a dirty place. Not only was the environment bad but a bad epidemic started called Cholera Epidemic. Cholera was a horrible disease that was spreading all over London and killing people by millions. The symptoms were terrible; Diarrhea, muscle spasms, dehydration, hypertension, and at the same time, you remain conscious of it all. The Cholera epidemic was taking lives like no other in mostly in Soho. Soho became one of the busiest parts of London. I found it interesting how in the book he mentions people we have studied like Karl Marx and some other people. This book gets more interesting as it develops.

Ghost Map 111-188

The section starts out with British using the wrong option for stopping the chloerm. They decided to just bleach everything to take the smell away from the broad street area. This section also introduces Chadwick who is basically started the idea that the government should provide healthy environment. Chadwick’s idea on government where right but Chadwick’s idea to take the smell away from the infected area was wrong. They actually make it worst by eliminated any private cesspools. This made the possibility of get cholera even more likely. This turned the isolated cholera into a city wide infection. What they tried to show is that the English government looked at the two theories and chooses the theory that was cheapest. After they found out that this would fix the problem, they go with snow theory and they were not able to fix the problem quickly , because they could apply a city wide public health to the problem. First problem to the problem of in London was Overcrowding and number two the lack of public health.