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Research Throws Up Interesting Things
Dec. 5th, 2017 06:18 pm So I'm writing a fanfic about Bloodborne and feeling a bit...hmm.
It's part of the fic for the 'violence' prompt, because when I think violence I think From Soft, but in the course of researching stuff for the fic (mostly about common diseases of the time, sex and sexuality, changing medical treatments), I found some very...interesting ideas.
In the 1850s, there was an outbreak of Cholera that a man named John Snow (no, not that one) traced back to the Baker Street Pump. After taking samples of the water from the pump and showing that it had various microorganisms in it, he convinced the local government to remove the handle from the pump. This helped curb cholera in the area, though he was unable to convince the people of germ theory, though many eventually came around.
However, the reason they didn't want to believe John Snow was because fecal-oral transmission of disease was considered unpalpable to the public. And it's far from the first or last time something like that has happened with diseases- HIV/AIDS probably being one of the most infamous cases of "let's not talk about it".
And interestingly, in my country at least, one of the things that did help curb the spread of HIV was a very frank public health leaflet that went into details of how it spread. The leaflet was distributed across the country, even against outcry, because it didn't matter if people though sex was gross or icky- it was a public health crisis.
It just reminds me that there is never going to be a case where censoring topics related to 'icky' things is going to be a good idea. At best it makes people naive. At worst it helps actual danger, whether that's a bacterium in the water supply or a predator in the crowd hurt people.
It's part of the fic for the 'violence' prompt, because when I think violence I think From Soft, but in the course of researching stuff for the fic (mostly about common diseases of the time, sex and sexuality, changing medical treatments), I found some very...interesting ideas.
In the 1850s, there was an outbreak of Cholera that a man named John Snow (no, not that one) traced back to the Baker Street Pump. After taking samples of the water from the pump and showing that it had various microorganisms in it, he convinced the local government to remove the handle from the pump. This helped curb cholera in the area, though he was unable to convince the people of germ theory, though many eventually came around.
However, the reason they didn't want to believe John Snow was because fecal-oral transmission of disease was considered unpalpable to the public. And it's far from the first or last time something like that has happened with diseases- HIV/AIDS probably being one of the most infamous cases of "let's not talk about it".
And interestingly, in my country at least, one of the things that did help curb the spread of HIV was a very frank public health leaflet that went into details of how it spread. The leaflet was distributed across the country, even against outcry, because it didn't matter if people though sex was gross or icky- it was a public health crisis.
It just reminds me that there is never going to be a case where censoring topics related to 'icky' things is going to be a good idea. At best it makes people naive. At worst it helps actual danger, whether that's a bacterium in the water supply or a predator in the crowd hurt people.
