Something that cannot be seen by the human naked eye has changed our world. In Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History Dorothy H. Crawford takes readers through a timeline of the beginning of life to our current day and how microbes have impacted the earth every step of the way. Crawford is a virologist professor at the University of Edinburgh. She has many degrees and certifications in her field so she has an immense amount of knowledge of microbes. Her strong suits include the ability to go through histories trajectories along with how factual the book is this compels the reader to believe her words, however there a few details in the book that Crawford slips up on questioning her credibility just a bit and is she is biased towards
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Crawford goes through the trajectories of history such as the beginning of earth, the transition of hunter-gatherers to farmers, disease in the medieval times, disease bringing brought in from the Old World to the New World and famine occurring because of microbes. The topic I believe Crawford did the best on was talking about the disease in the medieval times the microbe have turned on humans and created diseases that have wiped out hundreds and thousands of people throughout the entire world. Disease like the black plague and small pox occurred at this time. The argument she brings in that helped spread the black plague was the people’s unsanitary environment. She does a well job of having a logical argument along with much evidence to back her up. She paints a vivid picture of how the living the conditions were at the time of the plague, there were “no facilities for waste disposal everything was thrown out into narrow lanes that ran between the dwellings so… mud, human and animal excreta and garbage…ended up in the rivers that served as the water supply” (Crawford, 82). The extreme lack of a clean environment along with over population can be said to have helped lead to the black plague, this allowed microbes to have “easy access to food and water; and lack of personal hygiene allowed vectors like fleas and lice to prosper” …show more content…
Crawford only sticks to speaking about how microbes are bad since they have caused diseases, famine and what not. However, readers should also know that there are more good microbes than bad. It is important to know the beneficial microbes and should not be in fear of microbes. Good microbes are in foods like cheese and yogurt along with vaccines. But Crawford has painted this image that microbes have shaped our history only because of the awful diseases its created. She even brings up at the end of the book that there are advances to combating the diseases through means such as sanitation and vaccines. But she fails to bring up how vaccines work, a person gets a small injection of a disease and their body is able to prepare to fight the disease so if it does come in contact with the person in the future, they will be able to resist or overcome it. Yet she steers the conversation back to how microbes will be a threat to our world without more progress. Sometimes too much progress can back fire. Also, if she is going to title the book Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History she needs to think about how not everybody will interpret the title as a book only talking about how microbes are deadly. My initial idea of the book was that it would include both the deadly and companion. I realize that companion has multiple definitions, such as from
Crawford goes through the trajectories of history such as the beginning of earth, the transition of hunter-gatherers to farmers, disease in the medieval times, disease bringing brought in from the Old World to the New World and famine occurring because of microbes. The topic I believe Crawford did the best on was talking about the disease in the medieval times the microbe have turned on humans and created diseases that have wiped out hundreds and thousands of people throughout the entire world. Disease like the black plague and small pox occurred at this time. The argument she brings in that helped spread the black plague was the people’s unsanitary environment. She does a well job of having a logical argument along with much evidence to back her up. She paints a vivid picture of how the living the conditions were at the time of the plague, there were “no facilities for waste disposal everything was thrown out into narrow lanes that ran between the dwellings so… mud, human and animal excreta and garbage…ended up in the rivers that served as the water supply” (Crawford, 82). The extreme lack of a clean environment along with over population can be said to have helped lead to the black plague, this allowed microbes to have “easy access to food and water; and lack of personal hygiene allowed vectors like fleas and lice to prosper” …show more content…
Crawford only sticks to speaking about how microbes are bad since they have caused diseases, famine and what not. However, readers should also know that there are more good microbes than bad. It is important to know the beneficial microbes and should not be in fear of microbes. Good microbes are in foods like cheese and yogurt along with vaccines. But Crawford has painted this image that microbes have shaped our history only because of the awful diseases its created. She even brings up at the end of the book that there are advances to combating the diseases through means such as sanitation and vaccines. But she fails to bring up how vaccines work, a person gets a small injection of a disease and their body is able to prepare to fight the disease so if it does come in contact with the person in the future, they will be able to resist or overcome it. Yet she steers the conversation back to how microbes will be a threat to our world without more progress. Sometimes too much progress can back fire. Also, if she is going to title the book Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History she needs to think about how not everybody will interpret the title as a book only talking about how microbes are deadly. My initial idea of the book was that it would include both the deadly and companion. I realize that companion has multiple definitions, such as from