I chose to read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry. The book is about the 1918-1919 "Spanish Flu", which is the deadliest modern pandemic the world has ever seen. Barry covers a lot about the way the disease infects and how it affects the body. Most of the book is about the introduction of germ theory and how the 1918 flu was the first time modern medicine was put to the test. Until the beginning of the 20th century, medical schools were little about medicine and more about how much money you had. Students completed school for a medical degree without ever seeing patients, and medicine still followed ancient Hippocratic beliefs. Barry explores the lives of prominent scientists and doctors as they discovered a new medical system, one based on lab work and research, and how they responded to the flu when there was little infrastructure to deal with a crisis.
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun in Kansas, spreading as troops carried the deadly strain to Europe, it erupted across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS killed in twenty years. In the United States, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.
Over all, the book is very informative and actually quite interesting. I felt that it was far too long for a book of this type, the number of pages could have easily been cut in half. However, I am indeed glad that I chose this book, and I would definitely recommend it.
- Guy Fawkes
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Did the book include pictures from the epidemic?? In New York City, they couldn't bury the victims fast enough, so they just piled the coffins on the curbs. Can you imagine how foul that must have been? Ugh.
ReplyDeleteWith all the hubbub about H1N1, I wonder if we might be able to avoid a pandemic as bad as the Spanish flu simply because we have travel so much now. Back then, when everyone went to Europe for the war, and then went home to their own nations, they brought germs to places where there was no immunity. Nowadays, people fly around the world regularly, so there may be more immunity among the entire population. Or, at least, that's what I hope will happen.
Mrs. McCabe