O U R C H A P T E R W A S A B O U T H O W E D M U N D C O O P E R C R E A T E D T H E M A P A N D H O W S N O W B E T T E R E D I T T O H E L P P R O V E T H E W A T E R -B O U N D T H E O R Y .

The Ghost MapChapter 8:“The Ghost Map”

Created by Isabella Santos, Emily Fertitta, and Caleb Sullivan

1st blockEnglish II accelerated

Chapter Vocabulary

• Word : vestry• Original sentence: “It was a small victory, since the vestry had

no power over public-health issues outside of Soho, but it gave Snow and his future allies something that Snow had long sought: an official endorsement.”

• Definition: room or building attached to a church, used as an office and for changing into vestments 

• Part of Speech: Noun

• Synonyms: church, shrine

Chapter Vocabulary

Word: excavation

Original sentence: Rumors that sewer excavations had unearthed the decaying but still pestilent corpses from the plague burial grounds had been buzzing through the neighborhood.

• Definition: the action of excavating something, esp. an archaeological site 

• Part of Speech: Noun• • Synonyms: digging, hollowing out

Chapter Vocabulary Word: effluvium

Original sentence: If some noxious effluvium had risen out of the plague pit surely the residents living directly on top of the pit would have suffered the worst casualty rate.

Dictionary: foul or harmful invisible emanation

Part of speech: Noun

Synonyms: smell, odor,

Chapter Vocabulary

Word: astutely Original sentence: It was, as the historian Tom Koch astutely

notes, a map organized as much around time as around space: instead of measuring the exact distance between two points, it measured how long it took to walk from one point to another.

Dictionary: having or showing keen judgment

Part of speech: adjective

Synonyms: wittily, intelligently

Text Structure

Page # Excerpt How excerpt supports Author’s Purpose

Pg.207 “After years of bureaucratic waffling, the stink finally motivated the authorities to deal with the crucial issue that John Snow had identified a decade before: the contamination of the Thames water from sewer lines emptying directly into the river.”

(problem and solution)

Johnson included this structure to show the problem of the sewer lines emptying directly into the river that contaminated the Thames water and the solution that helped get rid of cholera

Text Structure

Page #

Excerpt How excerpt supports Author’s Purpose

Pg.222-223

“First, it is kinder, gentler of 911;in other words, 311is the number New Yorkers call when there’s a homeless person sleeping near the playground ---and not the number they call when someone’s breaking into their apartment. The 311 service also functions as a kind of information concierge for the city, offering on-demand information about all the city’s services. But the radical idea behind the service is that the information transfer is genuinely two-way. The government learns as much about the city as the 311 callers do. You can think of 311 as a kind of massively distributed extension of the city’s perceptual systems, harness-ing millions of ordinary… “

(order of importance) Johnson used this structure in the book to describe 311 and it’s function in order from least important to most important.

Text Structure

Page # Excerpt How excerpt supports Author’s Purpose

Pg.221 “A suburban cul-de-sac is unlikely to have a significant number of Web pages associated with it. But a street corner in a big city might well have a hundred interesting links: personal stories, reviews about the hot new bar around the corner, a potential date who lives three blocks away, a hidden gem of a bookstore---perhaps even a warning about a contaminated water fountain.”

(contrast) Steven Johnson uses contrast to show the differences between a suburban cul-de-sac to a street corner in a big city and what you would find in each of the places.

Text Structure Page # Excerpt How excerpt supports Author’s Purpose

Pg.201 “It is a subtle chain of casual connections, but a plausible one nonetheless. The map helps tip Whitehead toward the waterborne theory, which prods him to discover the index case, which necessitates the second excavation, which ultimately tips the Vestry Committee toward Snow’s original theory. And the endorsement of the Vestry Committee rescues Broad Street from the side of the miasmatists.”

(Sequence) Johnson included this structure in this excerpt to show the chain of events to what led to the endorsement of the waterborne theory and Snow’s original theory.

Exemplar Quote Introductions

“Even the newspapers had implicated the old pesthouse fields. ( The Daily News had published a letter on September 7 accusing the sewer builders of unearthing an “immense quantity of human bones” during their excavations in the area.)” (Johnson 191).

CitationTransitionSpeakerVerb

Exemplar Quote Introductions

“As Jane Jacobs Wrote:Town and suburbs… are natural homes for huge supermarkets and for little else in the way of groceries, for standard movie houses of drive-ins and for little else in the way of theater. There are simply not enough people to support further variety, although there may be people to support further variety,…” (Johnson 221).Citation

TransitionSpeakerVerb

Exemplar Quote Introductions

It was, as the historian Tom Koch astutely notes, a map organized as much around time as around space: instead of measuring the exact distance between two points, it measured how long it took to walk from one point to another (Johnson 196).

CitationTransitionSpeakerVerb

Flow Map of Events

Edmund Cooper makes his version of the map

John Snow

betters Cooper’s

map

Makes a somewhat clear image of the “plague pit” and where victims died and where

Clears up Cooper’s image of the “plague pit” map and helps identify how many victims there were and where they died

Flow maps of events (cont.)

Snow’s Death

Farr discovers that Snow’s waterborne

theory was correct and recognizes that when

they find out that cholera was waterborne

Snow was important for knowing of how cholera

was contracted but died before it was realized and accepted

Snow finally got the

recognition he deserved for making

the waterborne

theory and it being proven that cholera

was waterborne

Syntax/ Advanced Mechanics/ Figurative

LanguageQuotation Marks at the end of sentences

Rule: Put commas and periods within quotation marks, except when a parenthetical reference follows.

Book Ex: A Voronoi diagram conventionally takes the shape of a two-dimensional field made up of points surrounded by “cells”.(Johnson 195)

Student Ex: Another thing his mother insisted he wear because she had mistaken belief it looked respectable and…brace yourself... “rich”.

Syntax/ Advanced Mechanics/ Figurative

LanguageAlliteration

Rule: Alliteration draws the attention of the reader to the line, it therefore emphasizes the text in that line.

Book Ex: But it is clear from Whitehead’s subsequent recollections that a powerful bond formed between them-the quiet, awkward anesthesiologist and the compulsively social curate-a bond forged both by living through an urban battleground…(Johnson 203)

Student Ex: Alice’s aunt ate apples and acorns around August

Close Reading

“The changes ushered in by the sewer system were manifold: fish returned to the Thames; the stench abated; the drinking water became markedly more appetizing. But one change stood out above all the others. In all the years that have passed since Henry Whitehead helped track down the Old Ford reservoir contamination in 1866, London has not experienced a single outbreak of cholera. The battle between metropolis and microbe was over, and the metropolis had won” (Johnson 214).

Close Reading ActivityMy Understanding

1st readingRead to gain the basic meaning. Look for key ideas and details.

2nd readingRead for deeper meaning. Focus on artistry and effectiveness of the writing: text structures and creative use of language (deliberate diction) to render a particular effect on the reader

3rd readingCompare and contrast the text with others you have read of its kind and to your own experience. Evaluate the overall effectiveness and its central idea or theme.

Author’s Purpose

Johnson includes this chapter to show how Snow got his idea for the map, and how he improved it to get endorsement for the waterborne theory to ultimately find the cure for cholera.