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j_cheneyIn interest of sparing the flist, I'm posting two reviews together
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry
This is a wonderful book is so many ways, detailing vast amounts of information. It's had tons of reveiws on Amazon, so let me just add my two cents here, and keep it mininal.
Influenza is bloody terrifying. This books sheds light on that in so many ways, starting with the way influenza mutates and following with the tragedy it can leave behind. Particularly gruesome were the accounts of this epidemic's assault on military cantonments, where healthy young men in crowded conditions became the perfect food for the virus. The books tells of thousands of men in hospital there, so many that the few nurses had no time to clean them or even remove the dead.....and the doctors and nurses were dying themselves. The death rates were terrifying, particularly since this particular mutation killed the young and healthy. The hardest hit age group was 25-29.....leaving behind thousands of orphans in the US alone.
Particularly interesting to me was the brief discussion of the psychological aftereffects of this epidemic: In adition to the more-predictable exhaustion, survivors have a much higher rate of Parkinson's and schizophrenia. (It has been established that women who contract influenza in the 2nd (or is it 1st?) trimester of their pregnancy have a much higher chance of having a child with schizophrenia. I read about this in Genome, I believe.) I find it a bit terrifying that you could come out of this illness with your brain chemistry altered. Yeesh!
I will note that the book had one failing for me, that I will call Grandpa Simpsonism. You know that scene where he goes off on "I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the fashion at the time...."? This book does that...a lot. There are endless asides about one person's medical career or another, and the first 166 pages of the book seem to be a paean to the head of Johns Hopkins at the time of the epidemic....who didn't actually do much about the epidemic as he was sick with flu for the bulk of that time. I haz resurch, can I show you it? All of it?. This book could have given me the pertinent information in 1/3 the number of pages. I'm impatient.
Garbage in the Cities by Martin Melosi
This is the other end of the spectrum, where the author gives you statistics, charts, and hard numbers. Yep, right up my alley. This author, who has written more books on this subject, goes through the basic ways municipalities handled garbage, sewage, and rubbish.
A pet peeve of mine is that so many people who write about the past forget to include the trash...or more importantly, the manure and sewage. Street sweeping and garbage collection, which Dickens often reminded us about (think Our Mutual Friend or Bleak House, for instance), are oddly dismissed by many authors who write about the past.
Cities that depended on the horse, however, for transportation and hauling, had two huge issues.
1) Manure in the streets (hence the street sweepers). Tons were removed daily, and in many cities simply dumped downstream or into the ocean.
2) Dead horses. Yep, that's what I said. Statistically, a city horse at the turn of the century had a !2-year lifespan!, (which I find incredibly depressing). In 1910, Manhattan sanitation removed 15,000 dead horses from the streets. By 1915, even with the increased presence of the oh-so-clean automobile, they were still removing 10,000 a year. So depressing.
I will say that this book, despite having some less than happy info in it, provided exactly what I was looking for.
A final note.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
displacedtexan read Life in a Medieval Castle and The World Without Us for me, and marked the sections I would be interested in, although he says I won't want to read the full books, so no reports on those two. I'll read the bits I need and move on to Crashing Through.
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry
This is a wonderful book is so many ways, detailing vast amounts of information. It's had tons of reveiws on Amazon, so let me just add my two cents here, and keep it mininal.
Influenza is bloody terrifying. This books sheds light on that in so many ways, starting with the way influenza mutates and following with the tragedy it can leave behind. Particularly gruesome were the accounts of this epidemic's assault on military cantonments, where healthy young men in crowded conditions became the perfect food for the virus. The books tells of thousands of men in hospital there, so many that the few nurses had no time to clean them or even remove the dead.....and the doctors and nurses were dying themselves. The death rates were terrifying, particularly since this particular mutation killed the young and healthy. The hardest hit age group was 25-29.....leaving behind thousands of orphans in the US alone.
Particularly interesting to me was the brief discussion of the psychological aftereffects of this epidemic: In adition to the more-predictable exhaustion, survivors have a much higher rate of Parkinson's and schizophrenia. (It has been established that women who contract influenza in the 2nd (or is it 1st?) trimester of their pregnancy have a much higher chance of having a child with schizophrenia. I read about this in Genome, I believe.) I find it a bit terrifying that you could come out of this illness with your brain chemistry altered. Yeesh!
I will note that the book had one failing for me, that I will call Grandpa Simpsonism. You know that scene where he goes off on "I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the fashion at the time...."? This book does that...a lot. There are endless asides about one person's medical career or another, and the first 166 pages of the book seem to be a paean to the head of Johns Hopkins at the time of the epidemic....who didn't actually do much about the epidemic as he was sick with flu for the bulk of that time. I haz resurch, can I show you it? All of it?. This book could have given me the pertinent information in 1/3 the number of pages. I'm impatient.
Garbage in the Cities by Martin Melosi
This is the other end of the spectrum, where the author gives you statistics, charts, and hard numbers. Yep, right up my alley. This author, who has written more books on this subject, goes through the basic ways municipalities handled garbage, sewage, and rubbish.
A pet peeve of mine is that so many people who write about the past forget to include the trash...or more importantly, the manure and sewage. Street sweeping and garbage collection, which Dickens often reminded us about (think Our Mutual Friend or Bleak House, for instance), are oddly dismissed by many authors who write about the past.
Cities that depended on the horse, however, for transportation and hauling, had two huge issues.
1) Manure in the streets (hence the street sweepers). Tons were removed daily, and in many cities simply dumped downstream or into the ocean.
2) Dead horses. Yep, that's what I said. Statistically, a city horse at the turn of the century had a !2-year lifespan!, (which I find incredibly depressing). In 1910, Manhattan sanitation removed 15,000 dead horses from the streets. By 1915, even with the increased presence of the oh-so-clean automobile, they were still removing 10,000 a year. So depressing.
I will say that this book, despite having some less than happy info in it, provided exactly what I was looking for.
A final note.
displacedtexan read Life in a Medieval Castle and The World Without Us for me, and marked the sections I would be interested in, although he says I won't want to read the full books, so no reports on those two. I'll read the bits I need and move on to Crashing Through.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-23 09:02 pm (UTC)1. International travel will make the virus spread quickly worldwide
2. Easy interstate travel through the US will make the virus spread quickly here, with the hardest-hit areas being cities with airports, interstates, and universities. They showed a map highlighting the spread it it looked like one of those NASA "US at night" pictures. (I took note of this because I live near the juncture of three interstates, a major state university, and an airport.)
3. While the very old and very young are always the most at risk, the hardest-hit demographic is the 19-34 (?) demo, mostly because they're the most mobile and come in contact with the most people.
4. Healthcare workers are screwed. (I took note of this because I am a clinical laboratorian.)
All of which you probably got out of the book you read. :)
Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, yesterday I read and economist's postulate about what a depression would look like. Basically he said healthcare and education would be the hardest hit areas, because those are the things people can barely afford anyway. Combine a flu epidemic with a depression, and the US will be hit pretty hard.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-23 09:18 pm (UTC)Even though it is true that, more young people caught it, the statistics show that a higher percentage of young people who caught it actually died from it. The mortality percentage rate, not just the numbers, were highest in that age group.
In the case of this particular mutation, the reason the healthiest people died stemmed from the fact that the response of their own immune system was what killed them. While with most influenzas, secondary infections (especially pneumonia) do the killing, in this one it was Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by the body's immune response....so therefore, the healthier, the more at risk...which is just scary.
Time this so that it's on top of WWI, and think of the youth of the world being wiped out....
#4 So very true....my brother is a GP, and would end up in the front line. I'd suggest you wash your hands A LOT, prepare your own food, and never leave your house.
They make the point in this book that the 1918 flu actually killed a higher percentage than is estimated by the WHO would die in an intentionally-released pneumonic plague scenario. So, far worse than bio-terrorism.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-24 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-24 01:47 pm (UTC)