The Ghost Map

Steven Johnson’s “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World” examines the disastrous Cholera epidemic that struck London-- one of the world’s first urbanized centers-- in the summer of 1854. It delineates the rapid movement of the Vibrio cholerae bacteria through an area lacking proper infrastructure to accommodate a population branching into the millions, and relays the importance of scientific understanding through…

The Ghost Map, written by Steven Johnson, is a story about the cholera outbreak in England around the mid-1800s. Cholera is a bug, after ingested, it multiples on the intestinal wall, tricking the cells to release water instead of absorbing it. The disease killed much of the population. Johnson used many techniques to show how serious the disease was during that time period. From imagery to irony, he used it all, but which were the most effective? The book is an excellent example of how paying…

populated neighborhoods and homes, and high costs of living. Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map is a descriptive narrative that showcases the relation between the spread of disease, population density, the common folk and life in London in the 1850s. In an attempt to discuss the narrative of The Ghost Map and factors around it, what follows will introduce Steven Johnson and his qualifications, briefly summarize The Ghost Map, explain the structure of the book, explain Johnson’s central thesis, and…

same type of public turmoil and fear of 1854. For instance, the Zika Virus has always been present throughout the world. However, it became the center of attention when there was a sudden increase in children born with microcephaly. As seen in The Ghost Map, the fear of an unknown disease makes individuals irrational. In areas where the disease is prevalent, controversy exists over the methods of protection (i.e. use of pesticides). Many athletes and sport’s fans turned away from the Olympics…

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, a nauseating account of Victorian London in the mid 1800’s, tells an appalling story of disease, devastation, and death. This was a crisis that had puzzled some of the brightest minds of the time. With overwhelming amounts of human waste collecting, and a growing stench in London it was no surprise people were dying. It must have been the smell of the waste spreading infectious disease in the air. While elected officials scramble to solve the problem by…

in the past, the heros in the battle against disease are not appreciated, despite every individual benefitting from their research daily. Author Steven Johnson sheds light on the horrors of life before the development of basic sanitation in The Ghost Map. Traveling back all the way to Victorian London, where children were lucky to live past five years old, disease, notably cholera, ruled all parts of life. When entire neighborhoods were wiped out within a matter of days, scientists like Doctor…

Medical Knowledge Having basic medical knowledge is essential for survival and taking care of one’s self. Without this knowledge, people can infect each other mindlessly and cause themselves and others to be at risk. For instance, in the book The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson, the majority of people living in that era were uninformed about the disease, cholera. People were in mass hysteria because they thought that the disease was caused by an odorless miasma. This caused thousands of citizens…

geography and explores why maps have always been so interesting to him and to fellow fans everywhere. Jennings takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of map culture: highpointing, geocaching, road atlas rallying, even the "unreal estate" charted on the maps of fiction and…

discovered. In 1506, two men by the names of Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller, collaborated together on a magnificent map that depicted something no one had ever seen before. Through the descriptive letters from a Florentine merchant, Amerigo Vespucci, Ringmann and Waldseemüller were able to formulate a textbook titled, Introduction to Cosmography, as well as create a massive map, which revealed a missing piece of the known world. These works were largely known to be extinct, yet one…

The main focus of education in Flatland is polygon recognition. When looking at another polygon in Flatland, they all look like lines. However, in early childhood, everyone learns how to feel one another’s angles in order to determine what type of polygon one is. Yet, with further education, it is possible to detect the type of polygon through sight recognition. In Flatland, there are two main variables that determine the route of one’s education; gender and social status. If one is male, they…