Gunpowder and calomel : Benjamin Rush and the malignant yellow fever -- Doctors and ministers : smallpox in Boston, 1721 -- Noddle's Island experiment : Benjamin Waterhouse and vaccination -- Scourge of the middle west : autumnal fever and Daniel Drake -- Improving the numbers : Lemuel Shattuck's report -- Adirondack cure : consumption and Edward Trudeau -- The beginning and the end : epidemic poliomyelitis -- A cancer grows : Edward Murrow and the cigarette -- Searching America's heart : the Framingham study -- A cure for complacency : HIV/AIDS -- Too little, too much : healthcare related infections -- Another kind of plague : measles and misinformation.
Summary:
Smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, polio... now largely just unhappy history. Yet from our confrontations with these past plagues come lessons. As we struggle to understand and remedy problems like HIV/AIDS, coronary heart disease, and Ebola infection, Gehlbach shows how encounters with epidemics in the past will aid our present understanding of health and disease.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.