ABSTRACT
Chapter 10 , titled “Health and Pathology,” examines a mapping study of the city of Philadelphia conducted by Ian McHarg and his students to document the impact of the environment on health and wellbeing. The beginning of the chapter ties the study to the concept of General Adaptation Syndrome proposed by the physiologist Hans Selye. Reference is also made to McHarg’s appropriation of the physiochemical concept of cooperative molecular evolution proposed by the biochemist Lawrence Henderson. The second part of the chapter examines the narrative that McHarg created to explain the project. This discussion, which includes his references to the medical examinations conducted by G. Scott Williamson at The Pioneer Health Centre and the behavioral studies of rats conducted by John C. Calhoun for National Institute of Health, indicates that his attempt to correlate incidences of disease and crime to poverty, race, unemployment, education and illiteracy was as complex, multifaceted, discordant, and ultimately as prejudicial as the maps and photographs of the pathologies that he sought to expose.
