The Ghost Map

In The Ghost Map author Steven Johnson illustrates an episodic saga as Dr. John Snow traces throughout London in order to solve one of the greatest epidemic of his time. As Steven Johnson creates the nauseating tale in the early parts of the novel as sanitation engineering was not at its best during the years of 1854, with John Snow enduring the sickening outbreak of diseases and his incentive to find out the causes and why this is happening to everyone around him. This day and age the role of physician is clearly different than it was in 1854, and even in comparison to how Dr. Snow practiced it. A big major difference I was able to noticed was the method of traveling and risking life and limb to map the epidemic, as his research furthered …show more content…
Snow used various hypotheses, and formulations to depict the illustrations of the map itself. Constantly working and changing ideas to develop the map, Snow works his way down to what is now known as the scientific method. He worked his way to create a theory away from the popular miasmic method of transfer and referred to the water as a source of illness. He was not ridiculed in the medicine world but merely casted aside as they thought of nothing more than a preposterous idea that their water could be contaminated. A misconception about Snow’s actual map that were debunked in the book by Steven Johnson was the greatness of public works in London and the effects of poisoning on the people. That smell and miasma theory was filled with holes and the people who worked in the sewers should be the sickest and they were not. Despite the debunking of the myths in the map, Steven Johnson still names the book after such a harsh name as The Ghost Map because it brings attention to the reader. That during this time in the earth’s existence people were dying left and right, hence ghost. And that for the first time in history someone, Dr. John Snow, was recording the epidemic as it was happening. Not using the term map as like a treasure map, but a map to guide further researcher see the pathways that one man has taken to better the living conditions of the common good. That a ghost map implies a trail of dead citizens and the marks they have left behind. It tells a much bigger …show more content…
Urbanization is a term for a shift in population from rural to urban areas, in which of our time is growing quite often. We live in a time were computers are more prevalent to see than trees. But that does not necessarily depict a bad image, we are progressing as a world into a new age. Changes happen some for the better and some for the worse, it is how we respond to them that really defines a positive or negative connotation. I agree with Johnson’s assertion due to the fact of improving nations and cities. That we are able to access so much more with urbanization, we bring to attention that we as people are much more capable that we know. To build skyscrapers as high as mountains, to create a whole network under the grounds we walk one, and eradicate the world from diseases and prevent our people form falling off the earth. Reading a story like The Ghost Map makes me feel more positive about urbanization, only because it conveys a step forward in society. That as a society we strive for change that brings a positive outlook in development. The novel makes keeping an open mind to what is happening around us in this “modern” era more relevant to us, because we get to know first hand how things were done in a time without cell phones, and internet. Developed societies play a role in improving public health systems in developing countries as they provide education and