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Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases

Lydia Kang,

Nate Pedersen

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Aug 06, 2022 Nic rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, history, medical, science, coffee-table

This is a perfect book to have out on a coffee table. It's easy to pick up, easy to put down, and fun conversation starters are packed within the covers. The title is completely misleading, with Patient ZERO in large, red lettering, in a petri dish, as if a target symbol.

Many of the diseases proffered had no patient zero. Basically, each disease section starts out listing a "patient zero", among other things, but it's not consistent. For example: HIV patient zero states "a primate"; Hansen's D This is a perfect book to have out on a coffee table. It's easy to pick up, easy to put down, and fun conversation starters are packed within the covers. The title is completely misleading, with Patient ZERO in large, red lettering, in a petri dish, as if a target symbol.

Many of the diseases proffered had no patient zero. Basically, each disease section starts out listing a "patient zero", among other things, but it's not consistent. For example: HIV patient zero states "a primate"; Hansen's Disease (leprosy) patient zero states "unknown"; Rabies patient zero is "unknown"; Tuberculosis patient zero is not mentioned, although it does state "the all-consuming" disease, instead. Patient Zero was definitely not the major focus, nor could it be, as they were often unknown. Also, I don't like calling someone out as it feels somewhat like blame.

Sometimes the writing was awkward as here, referring to Herophilus: Later, he was accused of being a butcher for dissecting men while they were still alive, called vivisection, as part of their punishment, though this is debatable...Though Herophilus and Erasistratus made great strides in anatomy, they did so by performing autopsies in addition to hundreds of vivisections. 68 What is debatable here? That he performed vivisections? Or, that vivisections were punishments?

Here, I believe she has a date wrong: When Trump learned in March 2019 of a small, flawed study that showed a benefit against COVID-19 from a well-known rheumatological drug called hydroxychloroquine, he pushed for it relentlessly as a treatment, even claiming to take a "preventative" course of it himself. 123 Shouldn't that be the year 2020? Also, no "Patient Zero" mentioned here.
Overall, there wasn't a cohesive feel to this book. It was a fun read, however, and it's loaded with interesting photos and graphics. I would definitely recommend this as a coffee table book. I look forward to Lydia Kang's next book, Quackery.

Tidbits from Patient Zero

In the early seventeenth century, Jan Baptista van Helmont asserted that full-grown mice could be produced in three weeks from a jar containing wheat and stuffed with dirty linen, and that if basil was crushed between two bricks, scorpions would arise. 43 Hmmm...I guess testing theories wasn't a concept back then?

This was a time when surgeons' operating frocks were stiff with blood and pus, a sign of a surgeon so good he performed case after case without washing in between. 46

Regarding the plague: An average of seven new plague cases occur annually in the US. 50

Those at highest risk for Zika were disproportionately marginalized and poor people in Brazil, especially women. They were at risk for sexual abuse, with no options to move to safer areas, and did not have access to healthcare, contraception, or abortion. In other words, much of the burden to fight Zika was placed on lower income women without the means or choices to help themselves.
. 127 As an aside, I put together a slide show on Zika for a class project. Several of the articles on Zika placed children as young as 10 into the category of women. A 10 year old is a child, not a woman. Also, children as young as 10 were becoming pregnant in Zika infested areas, and there's a large incidence of child brides in Brazil.

Christopher Columbus himself may have been one of the patient zeroes who brought a new variant of syphilis to Europe. 146 However, there should only be one patient zero.

Hansen's disease is very hard to get, as 95 percent of people are naturally immune. 178

Referring to lepers' colonies: By law, they were declared legally dead when shipped to the colony, which goes a long way to demonstrating the general feeling toward leprosy sufferers throughout history - and why we now call it Hansen's disease. 185

If you ingest too much silver, your skin will burn blue. Permanently. 203

In the White House, Roosevelt used a special wheelchair he designed himself...In 1938, Roosevelt made a massive impact on the race for a polio cure by launching the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes...This is why Roosevelt is pictured on the dime to this day. 259

In 2000 - 2001 this: The citizens of Fremont initially were thrilled to get their own full-time oncologist. Before him, they only had part-time doctors in town and often had to trek an hour to Omaha for various problems and treatments. During the physician's short tenure in Fremont, a shocking 99 out of 857 cancer patients he treated turned up with a fresh HCV diagnosis...Apparently, the doctor had further instructed his nurses to implement cost-saving measures that were blatantly dangerous, such as reusing syringes or employing a "community saline bag" for flushing chemotherapy ports. 268 There's also a book about this event, A Never Event by Evelyn V. McKnight and Travis T. Bennington

In 1346, when the Tartars set siege to the Crimean city of Caffa, they catapulted victims of the bubonic plague into the city. And it may have even seemed like it worked. An outbreak of the plague took down the defenders of Caffa shortly thereafter, and the Tartars conquered the city. 303

Absent treatment, rabies is the most lethal virus on the planet, killing 100 percent of its victims. 307

The term "quarantine" originataed in the fourteenth century, when the Venetian-controlled Mediterranean town of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a radical law establishing a trentino, from the Italian word trenta for thirty, in which ships and people from plague-infested lands would be isolated for a month to prove they would not spread illness to Ragusa. Those thirty days would soon change to a quarantino, or forty days' separation. 345

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