Written by Soma Das
It's not a time machine for the faint of heart. Author Julia Hauser, a contemporary historian based in Germany, and graphic book artist Sarnat Banerjee have collaborated on the graphic nonfiction book The Moral Contagion, which depicts Constantinople in the 6th century, 14 Europe in the 17th century, from London in the 18th century to Aleppo in the 18th century, Hong Kong, Bombay, and San Francisco in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the coronavirus pandemic that disembarked at a train station, and the entire world in the 21st century.
This book is an easy read, if a bit oversimplified, but it also takes us away from a global collective amnesia about people's behavioral responses to epidemics, pandemics, and the survival triggers of infectious diseases. It is a widespread attempt to awaken the “Those who developed symptoms were left to die alone…People were dying so quickly that church towers no longer tolled the bells for the dead. Funerals were abolished due to the threat to health.
These are chapter descriptions of the plagues of Florence and London hundreds of years ago. The crux of these fad echoes across generations is how strikingly similar human responses are across timescales.unknown and invisible threats to life
Throughout history, epidemics and pandemics have created fault lines that transcend class and ethnicity. “When the plague first hit the city, it fell prey to the homeless,” the author writes about the outbreak in Constantinople. In the Hong Kong plague of 1894, the victims were ethnic Chinese, but Europeans were able to secure shelter. When Chinese people fell ill, they were taken to former warships that had been converted into hospitals and facilities such as Hygeia, where standards were much lower than in hospitals for Europeans. The sick were kept in the bare fields, the mortality rate was as high as 90%, and people reported that not a single person returned from Hygeia alive. Patients' families protested by camping outside the hospital ship. Similar discrimination was seen in San Francisco during the 1900 Chinatown epidemic, when working-class Chinese people were suspected of dying of bubonic plague in a hotel, and police shut down Chinatown. Americans argued that rice eaters were more susceptible to plague than meat eaters, an Asian disease that afflicted people with poor hygiene. More than a century later, when hordes of immigrants began to leave Indian cities
The book also explores how unusual situations can bring out different aspects of an individual. As death and darkness rage in London in 1665 due to a pandemic, Samuel Pepys' sexual desire intensifies as well. He was a wealthy man at the time and wrote in his diary that on the one hand, the number of graves was increasing and that he was afraid to buy wigs for fear of wearing the wigs of the dead infected with the plague. On the other hand, his numerous affairs with women are recorded. He was all types of people because he left his wife in the country to keep her safe. About his experiences during his ruinous days, he concludes that he has never lived a life so joyful. Still, there are stories of superheroes, academics, and scientists of the time who risked their lives and jumped into adversity to find solutions to the problems at hand. Ibn Khatib, Ibn Khatima, and Ibn Khaldun recorded the plague in their intellectual works, while Japanese microbiologists Kitasato Shibasaburo and Alexandre Yersin identified the pathogen during the 1894 plague outbreak in Hong Kong. I deciphered it. Yersin bribed the hospital at a time when everyone lived miles from the hospital. His attendants put him in the morgue to lay hands on the pus and set up a makeshift hospital next to the poor hospital so they could access the body for his research. The same heroic qualities were demonstrated by scientists who worked together across countries to develop vaccines in record time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And the vaccine was as polarizing as it is now. Bombay in 1896 His Plague was written by Shirin, a medical student who aggressively advocated vaccines, and a follower of natural remedies who distributed leaflets recommending cow dung instead of serum and asked patients to apply natural remedies to the plague. It depicts the story of his two sisters named Mehtab. Unevenness.In this time travel
It's an unusual combination of a scholar and a graphic artist, but the results are interesting, entertaining and informative. After all, using graphics to tell the story of the biggest health tragedy is no mean feat. Banerjee's striking artwork enlivens the narration. From the perspective of drawing attention to an important topic as a creative tool, this book is a success. But the storytelling is unappealing, and Banerjee's imagery, while brilliant in flash, does not, except in a few cases, succeed in building memorable characters that last long after reading. This book gets full marks for conception and innovation, but could have done better in execution.
As world leaders ponder how to prepare to deal with the next unknown pandemic, Disease
Soma Das is the author of The Reluctant Billionaire and an advisor to multiple agencies in the development field.
Book: moral contagion
author: Julia Hauser & Sarnath Banerjee
the publisher: harper collins
140 pages, 699 rupees
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