104
edits
Changes
no edit summary
3. Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy: ''Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus'' – Rabies is still, in modern times, an incurable, deadly disease. If a creature, human or otherwise, is bitten by a rabid animal, that person will most certainly die – and death from rabies remains, even to this day, horrifying to witness. This book examines rabies from a couple of different standpoints -- the actual threat of the disease to public health, and the perception of the disease among individuals.
4. Deborah Hayden: ''Pox: The Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of SyphillisSyphilis'' – Ah, syphillissyphilis, the STD that affected so many popular figures of past centuries – from William Shakespeare to Al Capone. Also know as the “French Pox”, the legacy of syphillis syphilis traces back from Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas, to the 40-year Tuskegee syphillis syphilis study that began in 1932. The latter is known as one of the most racist, unethical studies ever done in the wester world.
5. Jennifer Lee Carrell: ''The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox'' -- Smallpox is a disease that has been around for appoxiamtely approximately 2000 years. Carrell’s study tells the tale of Edward Jenner, the English physician who developed the first version of an innoculation inoculation in 1796. InnoculationInoculation, which means the introduction of a antigenic substance in an effort to boost immunity to a certain disease, eventually became known as vaccionationvaccination. Carrell also includes crucial discoveries primer to Jenner’s – including the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who contracted the disease and was among the first to have her child innocluatedinoculated.
4. Ruth Richardson: ''Death, Dissection, and the Destitute'' – This book falls a bit outside the “popular medical history” category due to its academic prose, but it is, nonetheless, a highly readable, fascinating work for anyone interested in medical history. In the 1830s, the field of medicine was burgeoning, and dissectible corpses were perhaps the most crucial teaching mechanism for future doctors. The problem was, most nineteenth-century people were not amenable to having their corpses used for medical purposes. This meant that other means of obtaining fresh bodies must be considered…
