March 2024 Medicine, Epidemics, and Plagues

This month’s topic is Medicine, Plagues and Epidemics. These are to be widely interpreted topics. Some examples: the creation or testing of possible cures for hideous diseases such as cancer or ALS, Father Damien and his leper colony in Hawaii, medical thrillers such as those written by Robin Cook, Michael Chrichton, and Richard Preston. This month’s read could also focus on a specific epidemic such as the bubonic plague, yellow fever, the Spanish Flu, the opioid epidemic, or Aids/HIV. A possible route are the insane asylums of the 19-20th centuries. Both fiction and non-fiction are applicable.



Possible reads:
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Medical Mysteries: From the Bizarre to the Deadly... the Cases That Have Baffled Doctors
Blindness
Cold Storage by David Koepp
Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
The Intern Blues by Robert Marion
Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation by Sandeep Jauhar
Shutter Island by Dennis LaHane
Crosshairs by James Patterson
Five Patients by Michael Crichton
A Journal of the Plague Year by Danile DeFoe
The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
October Birds: A Novel about Pandemic Influenza, Infection Control, and First Responders by Jessica Smartt Gullion
Fever 1793 by Laurie Halsie Anderson
The American Plague: The Untold Story Of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
The Final Diagnosis by Alex Hailey

Please tell us what you will be reading and also make suggestions!

I am planning on reading The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh. Set in the mid 1880s in Kimberly, South Africa, the book includes details on the smallpox epidemic that occurred there.

I’ll be reading Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire (by William Rosen).

>3 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I've got this one on my TBR......I'll wait for your review! I have a friend who said she spent a lot of time on it and it was just very mediocre--but she's a tough cookie!

For sure I'll read Sweet Bean Paste. I can also recommend Preston's The Hot Zone (ebola), Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (non-fiction, cancer), and Fever 1793 (yellow fever).

ETA: Just found this one on my shelf Viruses, Plagues, and History. Looks like a contender!

I read Justinian's Flea. I learned a lot about a part of the history of the Roman empire that I knew little about. But the author's style of writing was rather tedious--he used a lot of asides and parenthetical statements which interrupted the flow of the writing. The history that I learned was interesting and useful, but the writing style left something to be desired, at least for me.

Polio, an american story not only a fascinating story about how the epidemec evolved, how the vaccine was discovered, how people reacted, but a very interesting look at the fund raising that continues today, started with the March of Dimes.

Polio, an american story not only a fascinating story about how the epidemec evolved, how the vaccine was discovered, how people reacted, but a very interesting look at the fund raising that continues today, started with the March of Dimes.

also the pull of the stars about the flu epidemic after WWI

I'll use this prompt to go on with my Outlander reread. My next one is Voyager. Medicine is not my usual topic, but in these novels I enjoy it, especially when Claire uses herbs. I like how she uses her skills to help others and also to get in touch with them.

I am reading Polio: An American Story right now. I'm almost finished. I'm finally at the point where they do large scale trials of the vaccine..

Top two priorities:

Hoping to get through Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water (which would also satisfy the February theme, but it's a Big Fat Book that I doubt I can get finished by the end of this month). I have a particular interest in India, where this novel is set.

I also want to do a complete read of A County Doctor's Notebook. I just stumbled across my copy of this, and it's one of the few works by Mikhail Bulgakov that I've yet to read (aside, years ago, from the first story, "Morphine").

====================

One other that I've just never gotten around to reading is The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams. I started it years ago but just couldn't get into it, and I do want to give it a try before I shed my mortal coils. (Incidentally, much as I love Watership Down, my favorite by Adams is Shardik, which I understand was his personal favorite as well.)

It's been years since I've read La Peste, but if I do a reread I'd want to do it en français. I do have Albert Camus: Théâtre, Récits, Nouvelles, which I think includes La Peste (at least according to its LT work page, but I don't have my copy immediately available to confirm this).

Some others I have in TBR:

• Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human (but not boxed and indexed, so I'm not sure I can find this one around the house too easily)
• Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
• Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
• Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
• Rand Paul, Deception: The Great COVID Cover-Up (but not boxed and indexed, so I'm not sure I can find this one around the house too easily)
• Dick Russell, The Real RFK Jr (which I assume includes some discussion of his past anti-vax positions)
• The Country Doctor (in the complete 1899 Centenary Edition translated by Ellen Marriage, which ties in with my 19th century French novel project that I'm working on for the next few years)

Also, there are a couple of Great Courses videos that I want to get around to: Understanding the Human Body: An Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology, 2nd Edition and What Science Knows about Cancer. Since I subscribe annually to Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses Plus), these videos are free for streaming; and I do like to watch Great Courses videos while I'm nebulizing twice daily for COPD.

And I've got Gray's Anatomy (15th ed 2013), which is terribly intimidating, though, at some 1200+ pages. But it might be fun to play around with Gray's Anatomy Puzzle Book, which I've also got around somewhere but may have trouble finding.

A couple that pop right to mind that I've read and don't plan on rereading at this time are Flaubert's Madame Bovary (I'd recommend the translation by Lydia Davis) and A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett.

ETA: One I forgot. Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui, which I have in Théâtre de Molière: Tome Deuxième and in the Library of America's Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations. Further ETA: Just checked the Amazon website and it looks like Le Médecin malgré lui isn't among Wilbur's translations.

>10 CurrerBell: I hadnt thought of covenant of water being a book for this theme but yeah it probably is. perhaps its time to read it!

-10 I really enjoyed The Emperor of All Maladies. Not a quick read though.

What NOT to read (does that make you want to read it?!!!)

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy. I had great hopes for this book, but the more I read the further those hopes took a nosedive. For starters, one would think that the book would focus on 8 plagues in some detail. However, the author divided time into 8 periods and discussed, too briefly IMHO, plagues and diseases in that time period and how they shaped/caused history. The author claims that humans no longer lay eggs because 10-12 million years ago (sigh) a virus entered our bodies and destroyed that function. By the end of the book, there was no respect remaining for the book or author. I can honestly say that I think the author needs some help/counseling if he believes his own ideas: China did a better job of controlling Covid-19 than the UK or US. Their numbers are better than the UK or US. They could take some lessons from the Chinese. Socialism is the only way that disease is going to be eradicated. Does he really believe that China reported all their cases? This author had a political agenda and it was quite obvious to this reader. Sorry I wasted my time and raised my BP;)! 304 pages 1.5 stars

>10 CurrerBell: I started Covenant of Water and liked it but kept getter distracted by shiny covers. Youre right, this would be perfect for this theme!

>13wow! If he had only stuck with the promise in the title he would have written a better book. But this sounds dreadful. Thanks for the heads up!

I'd like to read Opera: Desire, Disease, Death (Texts and Contexts), a book already owned for two reasons. The first is the spousal unit's recommendation - he found it interesting when he read it years ago. The second will be because I'm also (extremely slowly, like a page a day) reading a BFB on Mozart, and this will tie in nicely as I learn to read about music.

>15 PocheFamily: That book looks wonderful. I'm sure I'm not in a frame of mind to tackle it, yet. However, it's on my "list."

I read andromeda strainback in HS, and a few times after that. Might be an interesting read tho I suspect its gonna be rather dated. But if you havent read it, Id recommend it

>16 Tess_W: It's a whole new area for me - I have attended a few opera performances but never given them any thought. So I'll let you know how difficult it is from the uninitiated's perspective (but if you know something already you'd undoubtedly get more out of it than me!).

>17 cindydavid4: I had forgotten about that one! But it does fit the category. I also read that when I was in high school. That was the first time I heard of Michael Crichton. I'd recommend it too.

I remember browsing for another by him; cant remember what i picked first, then I saw jurassic park. Great book, scared me so much I refused t o see the movie

>20 cindydavid4: I didn't read Jurassic Park until after I had seen the movie. I loved the movie! It was interesting to me to see which parts got changed for the movie.

I wanted the HistoryCAT to "match" this month with Science and Medicine. I decided on three options for the HistoryCAT, but only 1 fits the medicine portion, so I'll definitely do that one so it fits here, too:

The Sawbones Book / Justin McElroy.

My current plan is to read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.

If that doesn't work I also have The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, historical fiction set during the 1918 flu epidemic.

I can recommend Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It was well-researched and a good read.

>23 kac522: I would also like to read the Defoe book. 2nd the Brooks recommendation.

I read (confess I began in February but finished today) Polio by David Oshinsky. A great book! 5 star read!

I just received Justinian's Flea from the library today. Going to begin it tonight before I fall asleep!

I have Year of Wonders out from the library and will be reading it this month.

Haven't decided what I am going to read for this theme yet. I have read Journal of a Plague Year and Year of Wonders before, so probably not these again. Am pondering.

I have a few books about medicine, disease and epidemics on my shelves and I was pondering what to read until I had a look at my graphic novel collection. Medicine: A Graphic History looks like one that I can get through this month.

I have started Disease and History: From Ancient Times to Covid-19 (touchstones not working).

I read Justinian's Flea by William Rosen. I feel that I have been fleeced by the ole bait & switch! I thought the book would be about the plague under Justinian's rule in AD 500-600's. Instead, I got a massive sweeping history of Byzantium, clear through WWI! This was a monumental task and not done well IMHO. It is rambling and there is no clear thesis. The author jumps from topic to topic and some of them I can not even connect to yersinia pestis, which had 15 pages dedicated to its evolution. I was 200 pages into the book (6 chapters) before the lil flea was introduced. And that was it--just one chapter. The remaining chapters dealt with how the flea helped to cause the downfall of Byzantium and also how it helped to rebuild Europe. I wanted pestilence and disease and misery and suffering! What I got was a scientific/historical treatise of 300 years of history and some of it so specialized that I had never even heard of it before--and I'm a history prof. (Sasanian Empire) This seems like it could be a book of separate historical essays that are only lightly connected. I read about the architecture of the Sophia Hagia as well as the yaka (?) timber used to build it; the entire chapter! I read about the Sub Atlantic Climate Change in Rome from about AD 100-750. I "think" the premise of the book was that all these things had to work together to create the perfect storm for the flea to evolve and wreak its havoc. I'm a simple woman with simple needs, I wanted more FLEA! 364 pages 3 mediocre stars

I have finished Die Reise unserer Gene which is crammed full with recent findings about the human genome and has a chapter on the origins of plague, tuberculosis and syphilis.

Yesterday I finished Disease & History: From Ancient Times to Covid-19.
This book is a partly chronological, partly thematic study of the history of disease and how it has influenced, or may have influenced, the course of human history. Some of this is through grand historical events and developments, such as the ancient Greek struggle between Athens and Sparta, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, or the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Other chapters cover illnesses affecting the lives of pivotal historical figures, such as: the certain syphilis that led to the extreme cruelty of Tsar Ivan the Terrible; the probable syphilis that affected Henry VIII and may have led to the sharp change in his personality in the late 1520s from the perfect Renaissance prince of his earlier years to the cruel tyrant of his last couple of decades; and, most famously, the haemophilia that afflicted Queen Victoria's descendants and in particular the final Romanov heir, the boy Alexei, whose parents Nicholas and Alexandra allowed themselves to fall under the sway of Rasputin and others, contributing in part to the downfall of the dynasty.

There are also thematic chapters on specific diseases such as syphilis, smallpox, influenza, typhus and various types of malaria, how these diseases may have originated (often disputed or unknown), how they spread and how they have been partly or wholly combatted (though it's not always a straight line of progress).

Generally speaking the content I have described above was very good and interesting, but I thought the book lost focus and conviction as it went on. Much of the later material on historical personalities such as Napoleon and Hitler was not really how disease the influenced their actions and subsequent history, but more of a recounting of their rise and fall. Some of the later thematic material was also weaker, I thought, for example that on mob hysteria, the influence of Joan of Arc's voices, and the rise of environmentalism. There was some portentous language such as: "The solution will then surely lie in the hands of one or all of humanity’s age-old enemies, Famine, Pestilence, and War – those Horsemen of the Apocalypse who also bring with them Death upon his Pale Steed". The slightly polemical epilogue on COVID 19 (written in November 2020) concluded that it "had already served to demonstrate that the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who haunt our histories were continuing to circle us, but now on swifter steeds".

Overall, though, this was a good read and a worthwhile reminder than historical events and developments are not just caused and directed by political and military forces.

Woo-hoo! Just finished Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water 5*****, which also qualifies as a Big Fat Book @724pp. This is one that would also have worked for last month's theme and will – if anyone's got too much on the plate for this month – work for April as well.

I definitely want to get on to Bulgakov's A Country Doctor's Notebook, one of the few works by Bulgakov that I haven't read (although I did read the first story, Morphine, years and years ago). I'd also like to get to Balzac's The Country Doctor and get moving on my 19th century French novel project.

First, though, I want to get to the Virago Reading Project 2024 - March with something or other of Patricia Highsmith's that I've got boxed away in TBR. Then I'll get back here to RTT-March for Bulgakov and Balzac.

Congrats! each time I try to read it, the size of the book makes me choose something else. Ive read books that big so I dont know what gives. I loved his other book so, maybe after I finish Olga.....

>1 Tess_W: I'm reading The Gene: An Intimate History. I'm halfway done and I've been enjoying it a lot.

I do know I'll need at least another month to finish it, not because it's hard to read (the narration is probably my favorite part so far), but because it's longer than the books I usually read.

I just finished A Country Doctor's Notebook 3½***, and I might even rate it 4**** if it were by anyone other than Mikhail Bulgakov, whom I consider the greatest Russian writer of the Soviet era. It's early Bulgakov, a collection of short stories that he wrote of his experiences just out of medical school practicing in rural Russia just before the Revolution through the early Civil War. Excellent, though it doesn't reach the level of Heart of a Dog or much less The White Guard among Bulgakov's prose fiction or the best of the plays, like Madam Zoyka or The Days of the Turbins (the latter his dramatization of The White Guard). And of course nothing can equal The Master and Margarita.

Next I'm on to Balzac's The Country Doctor, which will tie in with my reading project on les romans du XIXe siècle.

ETA: Daniel Radcliffe starred in a TV miniseries A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories
(link to Amazon) which seems to have run over two (short) seasons. I might try this out in the near future, though my skim over the Amazon description suggests a good bit of departure from Bulgakov's original (at least from the POV of a Bulgakov purist).

I have completed my read of The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh. I really enjoyed this historical fiction novel. Set in 1880s South Africa, a great deal of the story is directed toward a smallpox epidemic that the wealthy diamond merchants tried to cover up so as not to disturb the flow of diamonds.

I finished Balzac's The Country Doctor and this is one that gets (generously) just 2½**. I'm including it in this month's theme but only marginally so, since it does have a doctor as its central character and there is some depiction of the doctor's medical practice. That said, it's really more, in its earlier half at least, a promotion of principles of political economy along with some form of liberal monarchism – more a "treatise" than anything else and it reminds me of Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy (which I haven't read but which I know of from Deborah Anna Logan's superb critical biography The Hour and the Woman). The Country Doctor's more a "parable" than it is a novel or a character study.

OK, that's it for this month's theme. Three's more than I usually do for a month anyway. I've got two volumes of my Centennial edition (1899) of Balzac (the ones including Eugenie Grandet and The Country Doctor) that I want to get finished for ROOTing and for the Big Fat Book challenge, not to mention my 19th century French novel project, and I've got a Great Courses video on Paleontology that I want to get through for the RTT first quarter of prehistory.

Hmmm, my husband stole my copy of Justinian's Flea by William Rosen and just gave it back to me over the weekend. I know Tess was a bit underwhelmed by it but I would still like to read it. I'm not going to be able to get to it before the end of the month so I'll move it over to the quarterly prompt, "Biblical & Ancient Times".

I read Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a very short novella, or longish short story, set during the final weeks of WWI, just as the Spanish Flu epidemic is spreading throughout the country. It tells the story of Miranda, a young reporter, who has fallen in love with a soldier who is to be deployed overseas within the next few days after the story opens. And over these days Miranda herself is becoming ill with the deadly flu. Told entirely from Miranda’s pov, it’s a very convincing representation of the state of mind of someone in such stressing circumstances. I’m so glad this month’s theme led me to Porter, whose work I’ve not read in a long time.

Well, I wasn't going to continue The Hangman's Daughter Series due to the awkward and repetitive writing in the first book, but I ended up listening to the second title, The Dark Monk (translated from the German by Lee Chadeayne; narrated by Grover Gardner). In this book, a flu-like epidemic has swept into 17th-century Shonagu, Bavaria where religion, superstition and new medical knowledge co-exist in a constant state of tension. The town doctor is a former field surgeon, his son (who also serves as a medical professional) has been exposed to the newest ideas in medicine and, the hangman is knowledgable in herbs and long-lost practices. The townspeople are a mix of the religious and the superstitious which seemingly complicates recovery though the author makes a point of redeeming religious faith in the end. Though the flu isn't the main thread of the story, it is the canvas against which it is demonstrated the challenges of trying to heal the sick with limited resources and at a time when the sacred and the profane are at odds. And, FWIW, there is a gratuitous inclusion of a syphilis-maddened monk and graphic depictions of his symptoms. The sick monk may have added for melodramatic effect but with Templar Knights, highway robbers and kidnappings, I'm not sure why the author thinks we need more histrionics. o_0

22 MAR - Original Post
23 MAR - Edited for clarity, elimination of redundant words, phrases, run-on sentences and digressive parentheticals.

The Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine / Justin & Sydnee McElroy
4 stars

You might guess from the subtitle that this is a humourous look at the history of medicine. The authors are a family doctor, and her husband, a layperson. The book appears to be based on a podcast (I have no clue about this podcast). Some of the topics they look at include: opium, charcoal, mercury, radium, arsenic, honey, chocolate, and vinegar. Also, weight loss, the Black Plague, erectile dysfunction, spontaneous combustion, phrenology, lobotomy, poop, the dancing plague, homeopathy, bloodletting, polio, and more.

This was funny! I’ve read a number of medical history books that look at many of these things, so some of the stories are repeats, but it’s still nice to get the reminders, since often with books like this that include so many different topics, it’s easy to forget. There were some fantastic illustrations, and little side-notes of the authors dialogue between themselves about the various topics. Even though some of the topics can be pretty disgusting (though it didn’t bother me), this is a good way to read about it with the humour mixed in.

I read Year of wonders for this month's theme. This book is about an outbreak of the bubonic plague in England in 1665-66, and a small village that gets hit by the plague. The villagers decide to isolate themselves, so as to avoid spreading the plague to neighboring towns. The book tells what happens to the people there during the time that they are isolated. It is fiction but based on a true story.

I very much liked this story. We can see how the plague spreads through the village, while the villagers themselves don't understand it. It was interesting to read the different reactions of the people in the village to the plague, and how their suffering causes some of them to blame and attack some of their neighbors. It also shows how the same circumstances bring out better actions and behavior in other villagers. The author tells the story through the eyes of Anna, using an older style of speaking. There were quite a few archaic words used in the story that I had to look up, but it helped to set the scene. This book really drew me in with the story and the vivid characters.

I read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1722), which is also about the 1665 plague. Defoe wrote the novel as if it were a newly discovered manuscript by an observer ("H.F.") living in London at the time. Defoe did much research on the plague and includes real statistics reported by H.F. in the journal. It's amazing how some things were so much like our own pandemic and yet how things were so, so different. He de-bunks quacks and strange theories, notes the economic hardships the plague created and offers lots of anecdotal stories. I'm not sure I would have appreciated this as much if I had read it 10 years ago, but today it is eerily relevant.

>42 atozgrl: I loved that book, until the last chapter, which seemed as if it belonged to a different book!

>44 Tess_W: that was my thought too!

>42 atozgrl:, >44 Tess_W:, >45 john257hopper: Me three! But then I've found that with a couple of her other books, too--the endings leave me puzzled.

>46 kac522: me four

>44 Tess_W: >45 john257hopper: >46 kac522: >47 cindydavid4: I've been getting that a lot. The book could have probably ended without the Epilogue and been just fine. The Epilogue didn't bother me as much as it did most, apparently, but I have to agree that it doesn't necessarily follow what came before.

>46 kac522: Of her other books, I've only read People of the Book, and I thought the ending of that one was way over the top. So the ending of Year of Wonders was mild by comparison.

I did not manage to read Voyager this month and while I still hope to get to it soonish, I read All Quiet On The Western Plains by Isabella Hargreaves on a whim and it fits this prompt. It is a romance set in rural Queensland in the 1920s. An English nurse who works in a hospital falls in love with the owner of a cattle station. He was a soldier in the Battle of the Somme and suffers from symptoms that look like PTSD.

I happened to have a graphic novel on the shelf that fit the bill, Medicine: A Graphic History. It was an interesting and humorous look at the history of medicine from prehistory to modern times. It was written pre-pandemic so that was not covered. It was also translated from French so many of the breakthroughs lauded were of French origin. Funny how that happens.

I read The Pull of the Stars, set on a quarantined maternity ward during the 1918 flu epidemic in Dublin. Quite detailed medical descriptions so not for you if you do not like to know all the details.

>51 JayneCM: That's one I really want to get to!

I have taken A LOT of BB's from this month's reads. I could read an entire year on this topic, both fiction and non-fiction and still not read all that I want!

Just remembered, while reading another great work by Maugham, that painted veil may work here.

>54 cindydavid4: That was my first Maugham (though not for this theme, I think when he was the monthly author read in 2022).

the plague in the book is almost background to the plot but it does play a big part ultimently. So it might work here

>56 cindydavid4: I think so, it is pretty integral to the course of events.