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Count me as another person who's reading this book to gain better information about our present pandemic here in 2020! This book tells lots of stories -- from the history of medicine (germ theory and epidemiology were almost pioneered during the deadly 1918 pandemic!) to the birth of fields such as molecular biology -- but the central character is influenza and the terror and tragedy the virus brought to humanity.
There were times that I forgot that I was reading about a pandemic from a century a ...more
There were times that I forgot that I was reading about a pandemic from a century a ...more
In second grade, I had strep throat once a month for a year. At that time the main drug for treatment was penicillin, to which I am allergic. So instead I was given one of the few alternatives, anti-cillin. Anti-cillin upset my stomach, so I had to take these huge horse pills of chalk and dust and rat droppings to help the original medicine go down. I can picture both these pills, and almost remember the taste of the anti-queasy medication, and this was 20 something years ago! These days there a
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This one took me a long time to get through but I’m glad I read it. A detailed history of the 1918 flu epidemic, it taught me a lot about society, health safety and communicable diseases. And that we humans aren’t great at learning from our history. Overall, a great piece of nonfiction.
May 15, 2013
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