19th century Health and Sports

Health and Sports

Due to the poor environmental conditions, disease in the earlier part of the period ran rampant. As the century progressed and laws passed to correct the health concerns, the death rates of various illnesses began to drop and there were far less instances of ‘epidemic’ proportion. Some noticeable diseases include Chicken Pox, Cholera, Diphtheria, Poliomyelitis, Consumption and Smallpox. Among all of these, Cholera is the one most famous.

Cholera, known as one of the most dreaded of all diseases, acutely infectious, is caused by drinking water from contaminated sources. The first breakout of Cholera happened in India in 1817. Due to the developing international trade, the disease was spread other continents. For roughly counting, there were about six breakouts and 38 million people died during the first hundred years since Cholera found.

 The 19th century also saw the rapid creation, development and codification of many sports, particularly in Britain and the United States. Association football, rugby union, baseball and many other sports were developed during the 19th century, while the British Empire facilitated the rapid spread of sports such as cricket to many different parts of the world. There is one thing has to mention for sports is revive of modern Olympic Games in 1894. The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, was a multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to 15, 1896. It was the first international Olympic Games held in the Modern era. Because Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Athens was considered to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also instituted during this congress. This brought peace and friendship to the young people all over the world.

Reference:

http://logicmgmt.com/1876/overview/medicine/diseases.htm , 10/25/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century , 10/25/2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Summer_Olympics , 10/25/2012

5 talking pts

• The damage to the young generation due to the cruel war
• The different attitudes of people enrolled in the war against those stayed behind are two extremes
• A wrong way of encouraging young people going to the battle fields
• It is a tragedy of the novel and the movie from our eyes, but this satisfied the soldiers' last will
• The war was cruel and tough, but the soldiers could find their own way to have fun or love during break 

Task 2 Paul Baumer

Task 2 Paul Baumer

Paul Baumer is the main character in this book. This man was a high school student before joining the army. By being taught from his teacher that soldier would be a national hero and all the other positive aspects of the war, he was encouraged to join the army not only from others but also his will. There were also three students joined the army with him at the same time. After ten weeks training, they all changed a lot. Though there were only ten weeks, but in Baumer’s eyes, those days were even more worth than the past ten years in school. Baumer and his comrades in arms were sent to the front line of battle field after ten weeks of trainings. The conditions were poor in battle field. Normally soldiers could not get enough food or even a private space when dumping. At the beginning, Baumer complained this, but soon he got used to it. The worst condition was once soldiers on the field, they would never know whether they could make it through or not. Baumer found that the people around him just got fewer and fewer and everything happened on the front line was hard to bear. Sometimes they might get too dirty for them to tolerate thus the flees would be anywhere on the body; the supplies were not in time such that they got nothing to eat and had to fight against the cold weather at the same time; shouting and screaming were everywhere you could hardly tell whether it was from enemies or companions; all the ground was on fire filled with dead bodies and blood. Everything was horrible but unstoppable for Baumer. He felt sorrow and pain when he lost his close friend Franz Kemmerich, who left him first. When he saw people struggling crawling back to base and died in hospital, he could no more felt the pride teacher once told him but pain and death instead.

Front line was like a cage, and people inside became animals. So did Baumer. But it was lucky for Baumer because he got a chance to go home. However, when he got home, he could not feel love but questioning instead. People around him thought he was a coward and they laughed at his attitude of war. But he was only about 20 years old, all he did during these years was killing enemies. His life was meaningless. He was disappointed and distressed. Those people at back didn’t know the cruel of the war. So he decided to go back to the front line again. As he wished, he died eventually.

This is Paul Baumer, from an optimistic, patriotic and passionate person to a fear, distressed and meaningless soldier.    

Task 1

This chapter was mostly described about the life before joining the army and early days of being a soldier. The memory for Paul Baumer was clear at the beginning. During the school days, people treated the poems and other compositions as preciousness. But as they leaving homes and becoming soldiers, those memories would be torn apart by the cruel life in war.

The life in the army is quite different from normal life. Battle could change what people think and how people judge things, especially the sense of worth. The war showed no sympathy to the people enrolled in it. Those young soldiers, they were close friends, helping each other, standing back to back. But as the battle started, with the strict and cruel training in army, their minds were twisted. It was totally a rebuild for those young soldiers since they were just students before. The slogans from their teachers felt so weak here. People in the army considered the physical benefit much more than mental. The Corporal Himmelstoss from No.9 platoon was a typical example of who got twisted by the war. He treated his soldiers as animals as I see. He was extremely mean to Baumer and Kropp. The corporal often asked Baumer doing unreasonable things. But these two young soldiers they just did not yield to him. They fought as hard as they could finally they owned the respect from him.

Though those soldiers had fought together and came up with deep relationships, life was still worthless. When Franz was wounded and lying on the bed, only Baumer came to his side and tried to comfort him. Muller cared about Franz’s boots much more than his life. The doctors were so cruel to those injured soldiers. Death was so easy for them to talk about. Franz was hopefully at the beginning but as time passed, he realized that he would probably die. Franz lost the hope and gave away his precious boots to Muller finally. Baumer was sorrowful and upset when he lost Franz but when he turned the boots to Mulle, Muller was very happy and gave Baumer some small prizes in return.