The Ghost Map (2006) (edit title/settings)

Breanne edited the memorable quotes of The Ghost Map Wednesday, September 8, 2010.

• Added a quotation: “"...plagues were God's way of adapting the human body to global changes in the atmosphere, killing off thousands or millions, but in the process creating generations that could thrive in the new environment." (pg 127).”Henry Whitehead's understanding of plagues
• Added a quotation: “"The sense of smell is often described as the most primitive of senses, provoking powerful feelings of lust or repulsion, triggering memoires involontaires... Modern brain-imaging technology has revealed the intimate physiological connection between the olfactory system and the brain's emotional centers... <that> possess the capacity to override the neocortical systems where language-based reasoning occurs." (pg 128).”
• Added a quotation: “"Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a floodplain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age." (pg 149).”
• Added a quotation: “"And so the ghosts of the Broad Street outbreak were reassembled for one final portrait, reincarnated as black bars lining the streets of their devastated neighbourhood. In dying, they had collectively made a pattern that itself pointed to a fundamental truth, though it took a trained hand to make that pattern visible. And yet, however elegant its design, the map's immediate influence was far less dramatic than folklore has it. The map didn't solve the mystery of the outbreak. It didn't lead to the pump handle's removal and thus bring an end to the epidemic. In fact, it failed to sell the Board of Health on the merits of the waterborne theory. Yet despite those reservations, Snow's map deserves iconic its status. The case for the map's importance rests on two primary branches: its originality and its influence." (pg 197).”
• Added a quotation: “"In the long run, the map was a triumph of marketing as much as empirical science. It helped a good idea find a wide audience." (pg 199).”
• Added a quotation: “"And so the megacities of the twenty-first century will have to learn all over again the lessons that London muddled through in the nineteenth. They'll be dealing with 20 million people, instead of 2 million, but the scientific and technological wisdom available to them far exceeds what Farr and Chadwick and Bazalgette had at their disposal." (pg 217).”

Breanne edited the memorable quotes of The Ghost Map Tuesday, September 7, 2010.

• Added a quotation: “"... Farr began tabulating cholera deaths by elevation, and indeed the numbers seemed to show that higher ground was safer ground. This would prove to be a classic case of correlation being mistaken for causation: the communities at higher elevations tended to be less densely settled than the crowded streets around the Thames, and their distance from the river made them less likely to drink its contaminated water." (pg 101-102).”

Breanne edited the memorable quotes of The Ghost Map Monday, September 6, 2010.

• Added a quotation: “"Most world-historic events - great military battles, political revolutions - are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicled and dissected for decades or centuries to come. But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity. And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it's often too late - because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying." (p. 32).”