Essay Questions

What is syphilis?

Syphilis is a venereal disease transmitted primarily through sexual contact. The disease can also be transmitted if the infected mother gives birth to a child while being a carrier of the bacteria. Syphilis is relatively easy to treat, the bacteria being easily killed by penicillin. However, the disease is sometimes hard to diagnose without blood tests because its signs are common with other ailments and disease. The number of people infected with syphilis dropped drastically in the 40s, when penicillin was discovered but then it rose again in the 90s due to various environmental and social reasons.

What was the Spanish Flu?

The Spanish Flu was a pandemic that affected the world in the year 1917. It is estimated that more than 6% of the population died because of it in a short period of time. The Spanish Flu was easily transmitted from one infected person to a healthy person and in comparison with other disease, the Spanish Flu affected primarily the young and those who had a good immune system. Because of this, the Spanish Flu represents an exception from the other pandemics that affected primarily children, the elderly and the people with a weak immune system. The author talks about the Spanish Flu in the context in which he describes how quickly information can be transmitted and how it can end up affecting the people’s lives in a short period of time.

What was the Stanford Prison experiment?

In the fourth chapter, the author talks about the effect the environment can have on our behavior. To prove this, he mentions the Stanford Prison experiment that took place in the 1970s. During the experiment, a group of people were divided into prisoners and guards and put into an environment simulating the conditions inside a prison. The psychologists found that only after a few days, the people that were chosen to be guards changed their perspective and attitude about the prisoner group completely: they started beating them and treating them in an inappropriate manner. The things escalated so much that the experiment was called off only after a few days even though the experiment was supposed to last for more than two weeks. The experiment showed just how much the environment can affect a person’s decisions and how it can affect their behaviors.