I finished this a few days ago, but moving interrupted my blogging about it. The hypochondriac in me enjoys reading about diseases, and Wright's book about plagues was no exception. Although I have no interest in a career in the sciences or in medicine (I would be a terrible nurse or doctor), I do find these topics interesting.
The plagues include:
The Antonine Plague
Bubonic Plague
Dancing Plague
Smallpox
Syphilis
Tuberculosis
Cholera
Leprosy
Typhoid
Spanish Flu
Encephalitis Lethargica
Lobotomies
Polio
Wright situates each plagues in the historical moment or moments of its outbreak. Known or suspected causes are discussed as well as attempts and successful remedies or cures. Some of the remedies are horrific and others are laughable. For example, to ward off or cure the bubonic plague, it was suggested that people: drink a small amount of good wine, eat crushed emeralds, eat eggs, fruit, and vegetables, not look at sick people, chopping up raw onions and placing them around the house, and drinking your urine/buboes pus. There was also a cure involving exploding frogs and exploding pigeons.
A large part of each chapter is about the attitudes toward a specific plague and how they affect treatment of patients and how we discuss the disease itself. For example, in order to keep morale high during WWI, news of the Spanish Flu outbreak was deliberately censored from the press. This meant that is estimated to have killed 25-100 million people worldwide. Had the outbreak not been kept out of the press for so long, fewer people might have died. In the case of leprosy, there isn't a cure, but treating lepers with compassion and as actual human beings, had a profound effect on their outlook on life. In the case of Polio, a vaccine was ultimately developed because money, resources, and attention were given to combating it.
Although details are sometimes gruesome, Wright's approach is light-hearted and irreverent.
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