The Hot Zone Book Review

Much like the Greeks, Ebola can come inside one cell in an organism. The symptoms of Ebola can sneak into an organism’s body without much warning and begin to destroy the insides until symptoms like headaches are reported. Once the cell is inside, it spreads and doesn’t cease destruction until the host is dead. The way in which the Trojan horse and the Ebola virus attack are very similar: brutal, clever and inconspicuous. Preston compares the historical story of legend of the Trojan horse to the Ebola virus, hence allusion is portrayed in his

Slide 1- Introduction Good morning/afternoon everybody, today I have been assigned with informing you all about the Aztecs, or more importantly, the reason for their annihilation. Now you may be thinking that it was mainly to do with a war, but it is actually almost solely a disease called the variola disease or as it’s more commonly known, small-pox Slide 2-What were the symptoms and effects Now you may be wondering what made the disease so dangerous to the Aztecs. The main problem of the disease was the fact that not only did it kill 3/10 people effected it also severely lowered the victims fighting capabilities meaning that when the Spanish attempted to fight the Aztecs, it became much more favourable to the Aztecs. (Healthline, n.d.) The person became afflicted with a variety of symptoms that contributed to the previously mentioned tole to the victims fighting capabilities. One of the most notable symptoms was the rashes that would spread throughout the victims entire body which contained abscesses which made any movement of the victim incredibly painful, let alone wielding a weapon in combat.

One of these instances is in the Chapter Needless Havoc it is about the invasion of the Japanese Beetle that found its way to America. The Government tried to spray pesticides to get rid of them but all they did was infected all the human beings and domestic animals in the area and still had the beetle crawling around. This is just one example Carson uses throughout the book of the government and organizations who misuse the pesticides and dangerous chemicals and end up harming much more than the target. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” as a whole was a major success. Soon after she published the book it was so powerful and awakening to the people that many laws came about that banned the use of DDT and put regulations on pesticide use.

These diseases often traveled ahead of the Spanish.” This tells us that disease was also very involved in the conquering of the Aztecs. In Millers book we are provided with a point of view from inside during the siege of Tenochtitlan. The passage suggests an excruciating and wide spread epidemic of small pox with many people dying from it while the Spaniards lay siege. The passage describes people covered in pustules laying down and being in excruciating pain. The image above shows a native infected with small pox and this illustrates exactly what was described in the passage.

This has nothing to do with the last page we ended on and it frustrated me throughout the book that this happened continuously. Overall,“The Hot Zone” is a very good book and I would recommend others to read it. I loved the detail that Richard Preston put into the book and how he made his point across very clearly about Ebola. He is a very good write and I am glad that I got a chance to read this book because it taught me about Ebola and other viruses as well. This is a very good novel and I am looking forward to seeing more of his writing or maybe even looking at others that he has already

Yellow fever which is transmitted by a mosquito can cause: Fever, nausea, it can affect the kidneys and liver, and in most cases it causes death. In the story the people’s eyes and skin turn yellow hence the name “yellow” fever. Yellow fever has affected towns all over and doctors cannot get a grasp on it. The death and sickness gets so bad that people are told to stay inside and not leave for any circumstances other than to leave town. The death in the city rises from the hundreds to the thousands daily.

This caused an awakening in the medical field, as physicians where viewed as a failure. “New medical tests were developed” and science began to make its way into medicine, as new concepts and health measures were beginning to develop (Swenson 185). The sight of death was in the eyes of every individual who witnessed this plague, and the unquestionable Catholic Church soon began to fall also. Peasants began to question their creators and turned away from religion for “having failed totally during the epidemic” (Swenson 185). The plague decimated nearly more than 50 percent of catholic clerics, paving the way for

“The more one contemplates the hot viruses, the less they look like parasites and the more they begin to look like predators” (Preston 136). There is many different viruses around the planet; each spreading and mutating, jumping from species to species, picking out and taking down their prey. Richard Preston identifies viruses as predators in his novel, The Hot Zone, to show just how lethal they really are; the worst being the hot agent Ebola. The Ebola virus is the most dangerous hot agent, with high fatality rates, mutations, and limited survivors. Ebola is one of many hot agents around the world, however it is the deadliest.

One of the immediate ways to kill bed bugs is to steam them out. …” (And information found in Quotations from The 4 Best Ways to Stop Bed Bug Bites Immediately). A big problem in the world is bedbugs. Bedbugs are hard to get out of big business building 's cause they are microscopic. And people can 't see anything microscopic with the normal eye.

Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, and yellow fever) to human (Mitchell 1995, Shroyer 1986). All these viruses are very harmful to human and other organisms, they causes several diseases to humans. For instance in 2007 there was an outbreak of chikungunya in Italy, and other cases of dengue viruses were reported in south France and Croatia. The dengue virus is known to have four strains, therefore attacking one strain doesn’t immunize against contracting the other strains, so it become so difficult to treat the diseases caused by this virus. Chikungunya virus causes fever, swelling and redness of joints, severe rheumatic pains and in some cases death; according to research in various lab it has been shown that when a person is repeatedly infected with dengue viruses, this increases the risk of more severe sickness such as DenguhocyndromSS which induces shock as a result of a sharp drop in the volume of blood which might also lead to

In the battle of Ypres, the most unconventional and cruel weapon was used, chlorine gas. The gas not only killed several hundred people, but also injured many soldiers severely on both sides of the front. It had the ability to cause blindness, lung diseases, disfiguration and burns. In this situation, the only defense the soldiers had against the gas was a handkerchief soaked in urine (as the ammonia crystallised the chlorine gas). The gas mask was a simple invention but for the soldiers, it was miraculous and a ray of hope that they could survive the war.

One major disease was small pox. Smallpox, an acute contagious viral disease, with fever and pustules usually leaving permanent scars. It was effectively eradicated through vaccination by the year 1979. Many people died from this disease. “A violent kind of smallpox rages in Charles-Town that brings most of the businesses to a halt.

For instance an attacking army launched infected corpses via catapult over walls of the city they were trying to take siege on in hopes that the smell would make them flee. In reality all they did was kill off most of the city by infecting them all with the plague (Dobson 13). No one realized that before an outbreak of the plague, many rats died. The connection between rats and the plague was made only a century or so ago die to advances in science and technology (“Plague” 1). Sometimes the plague goes from being bubonic to pneumonic, meaning it was able to be spread from person to person in the air via droplets from their lungs (“Plague” 1).