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| | Mapping out the course of a disease - Newsday.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14) |
 | | Reading medical history is the best nostalgia cure known to man. It only takes a few accounts of epidemic diseases like the Black Plague, smallpox or the Spanish influenza to remind us that life in the long ago was not a costume drama. |
 | | This is the world Steven Johnson brings to life in his quirky, ambitious account of the London cholera epidemic of 1854, "The Ghost Map." Well into the 19th century most people believed miasmas, or bad air, caused sickness. |
 | | For doctors of the day, he says, "The idea of microscopic germs spreading disease would have been as plausible as the existence of fairies." |
| www.newsday.com /features/printedition/ny-bkbotleft4986132nov26,0,916587.story?coll=ny-features-print (843 words) |
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