Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Questions on “cholera in Hamburg†Essays
Questions on â€Å"cholera in Hamburg†Essays Questions on â€Å"cholera in Hamburg†Paper Questions on â€Å"cholera in Hamburg†Paper Questions on â€Å"cholera in hamburg†QUESTION ONE            Improved scientific understanding of disease and treatment is also to modernization, which depends heavily on scientific and technological solutions to problems. In addition, modernization depends on humans’ ability to control their physical environments and maintain a high level of cleanliness. In Hamburg’s case, improved medical care (which approaches disease as a biological condition, not a case of moral failure) does not take class or character into account or seek human scapegoats for epidemics.            Also, while von Pettenkofer’s theory about cholera’s causes (from the soil) were wrong, he did help create the still-accepted practice of preventive medicine, in which one altered one’s habits and environment in order to reduce vulnerability to illness. He advocated good habits like diet, cleanliness, temperance, and fresh air, and he favored a clean public water supply and effective sewage, even if he failed to see fouled water as cholera’s true cause.            It also reflects better understanding of urban systems like sanitation and water, which affect public health. The people of 1831-32 Hamburg failed to understand cholera’s true causes, blaming poor drunkards and beggars and imposing their own class biases on a phenomenon that has nothing to do with social standing. The vulnerable met blame instead of empathy and assistance, and the affluent tried to guide their behavior and impose their own sensibilities on the poor.            The private sector’s rise is also integral to modernization, since modernity is partly characterized by capitalism. During the epidemic, Hamburg’s bourgeoisie (particularly its doctors) assumed control and privatized what had been a public-health issue, with costs reduced despite the epidemic’s increased severity. QUESTION TWO            Hamburg in general viewed the cholera epidemic as a terror (because of its speed and violent onset), but also as an ailment offensive to bourgeois sensibilities. Unlike tuberculosis, it had no aesthetic appeal because of its violent onset and vile symptoms (particularly diarrhea and vomiting). Though Hamburg’s epidemic likely came from contaminated river water, doctors argued about whether it came from contact with infected people and objects (though quarantining the sick did not work), from â€Å"miasmas†(fouled air), or from unclean people, particularly the poor people whom it affected most severely.            Doctors ultimately advised the state to encourage the public to embrace better habits, like temperance and hygiene. In particular, they directed their attention to the city’s poor, sharing bourgeois beliefs that Hamburg’s impoverished were guilty for creating and spreading the squalor and bad habits that somehow contributed to the epidemic.            Von Pettenkofer’s ideas were attractive to Hamburg’s leaders largely because he so tirelessly advocated and publicized them. In addition, the fact that he promoted relatively cheaper solutions made his ideas appealing to local elites, who sought inexpensive and easy solutions to cholera’s recurrence. Though he overlooked water’ s role and blamed a miasma caused by an elevated water table and moist soil, his personal influence and reputation made his erroneous ideas popular. Also, he had some valid notions about preventive medicine and a clean water supply (though he never understood that water was cholera’s chief means of transmission).            Today, the United States has no nationalized health insurance, leaving many unable to afford costly privatized health care or expensive prescription medications. Preventive medicine is still embraced and treated by many as a cheap alternative to requiring more expensive private treatment. QUESTION THREE            Before the medical profession actually understood cholera’s causes and found effective treatments, outbreaks such as Hamburg’s were blamed on easily-targeted social undesirables (particularly â€Å"beggars and drunkards†). The poor were guilty mainly of offending the city’s bourgeoisie, but also the disease’s ugliness gave it added stigma. Since then, sexually transmitted diseases since then have been similarly ascribed to moral weaknesses.            In the early twentieth century, syphilis carried a great deal of shame and was blamed on sexual promiscuity; basically, many believed that people who contracted it somehow deserved it because of their disreputable lifestyles. In the years since syphilis has become curable and far less widespread, AIDS has assumed its role as the chief stigmatized disease. Because many of its victims were initially homosexuals and intravenous drug users (long considered outsiders in mainstream society), AIDS is in ways the cholera of modern times – little understood, currently incurable, and still commonly ascribed to lifestyles and habits that â€Å"respectable†society finds offensive or aberrant.            Such class- or morality-based arguments prevent victims from being treated with proper empathy and, more importantly, hinder efforts to control the spread of such diseases. Where AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases are concerned, authorities advocate a preventive approach, much like Hamburg’s bourgeoisie did; this form of behavior modification says more about mainstream values and prevents a closer, more tolerant understanding of the disease and even shows the government’s lack of concern. The Reagan and elder Bush administrations were sometimes accused of doing little about AIDS because they did not approve of â€Å"alternative lifestyles,†thus hindering scientific efforts to reckon with the disease.
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