Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer WrightMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an entertaining and enlightening overview of widespread medical catastrophes from antiquity to today. Delightfully narrated by Gabra Zackman, there is a tone here between Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks. Sacks is explicitly covered in the parts about the scarily recent usage of the drug L-Dopa administered to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica ("EL"). Also covered is the fascinating and mysterious dancing plague. Here Wright suggests the importance of compassion compared to the heartless treatment of bubonic plague victims, including home invasions from shovel-wielding gravediggers. In an overview of syphilis we read of the decline of the Inca and rise of the No Nose Club. We also meet the notorious Typhoid Mary and hear details of perhaps the most senseless plague on humanity: Freeman's lobotomies.
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