Review: Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this for the Doomsday square for Halloween Bingo.

Previous Updates:

Antonine Plague

Bubonic Plague

Dancing Plague

Small Pox

Syphilis, Tuberculosis, and Cholera

Leprosy, Typhoid, and Spanish Flu


Encephalitis Lethargica

There is still no cure for EL, and its rise and subsequent disappearance is still regarded as something of a mystery.

I have heard of this before but only in the obscure and morbidly fascinating sense, think more horror movie than documentary. The unknown-ness of this one draws me and repels me away. Reading about how it affected people's personalities, bodily functions, and sent them into comas is frightening.

If you are interested in following a line of thought on interrelated diseases, though, some scientists today think that EL is related to streptococcal bacteria, so that’s a fun thing to consider when you get strep throat.

I have never heard and this and can I just say WHAT?!? Reading about how adult's showed after effects of Postencephalitic Parkinson’s disease which led them to L-dopa as a cure and how it initially worked, the woman waking up from a coma years later and thinking it was early 1940s when it was late 1960s, was wild. I think this "plague" was added to just scare the crap out of everyone as there is still no known cure but I guess it hasn't made any more appearances? This is one I'm going to have to investigate further because how freaking wild that it seems to suddenly appear in 1916 and disappear in 1920s. I guess I'd put my bet on Aliens.

Lobotomies

Somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of lobotomies were performed on women, despite a greater percentage of men being institutionalized.

This probably shouldn't have been included in a plague book but it is important to discuss, so I'll allow it. I'm against lobotomies, so I had no problem how the author discussed Freeman, the physician behind the start, procedure, and craze of them. The accounts of how he went about them, snipping here and there, until he got the desired amount of not quite comatose in patients, is horrifying and rage inducing.

A charismatic demagogue was elevated and trusted because he was captivating and because researching facts, as well as listening to dull doctors who have done their homework, is hard and time-consuming.

This quote, I can't tell you how much I feel this quote down into my soul right now. Reading about how women who were listed as menopausal or hysterical, by doctors that didn't even converse with them but rather their husbands and given over to Freeman for lobotomies had me fighting tears. This chapter was all about making sure there are committees, watchdogs, or the like in place to stop charismatic, mad medical field individuals from dazzling people with their "science".

Polio

Well, herd immunity works for most diseases only if about 80 to 90 percent of the population is vaccinated. With some diseases, like measles, a 95 percent vaccination rate is necessary.

Again, vaccinate your kids.

I have to say, I'm not sure I knew Polio came from contaminated water or food, kind of like typhoid. That is how well we eradicated it, I didn't even know what caused it! The author talked about live virus and killer virus vaccines and the rivalry between Salk and Sabin to get there. I've heard of Salk before because of how he used unwittingly mental health patients for clinical trials, which the author mentioned but after saying he should be considered close to a saint. I'm not quite there on him but I'm a grey shades person and as long as you mention the shitty aspects I don't have a problem stating all the good he also did. Seems wild in today's atmosphere of people dying because the price of their insulin is too much money that he didn't patent his vaccine but I'd like to read more on the legalities of if and how he could have.
My favorite part of this section was the focus on how representation matters and how FDR gave hope and pride to fellow Polio survivors.



Those who had AIDS survived because they, like Mr. Crumpton’s No Nose’d Club for syphilitics, founded groups like the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP to fight for their right to live. They supported one another. They protested. They yelled. They made people extremely uncomfortable.

I'm not a scientist or in the medical field, so there was definitely new information for me to gain from reading this. I went in thinking this was going to be a drier, informative read but realized very early on that my expectations needed to be changed. This is more of a coffee table book where casual readers can just pick it up and learn some interesting facts that will either make them popular on trivia night or send them down a drier text reading rabbit hole.

The author has a sarcastic, pop culture heavy tone that could turn some people off as we discussing real horrible deaths but I'm a bit of a gallows humor gal myself, so except for a couple times, I wasn't put off or offended. I do think the pop culture references are going to date this and age it out of future circulation.

All in all, I learned some facts, was intrigued to research some, and enjoyed this more surface look into diseases. This book is not for experts in the field but the average person could definitely get something out of it. However, if you're an anti-vaxxer, you'd probably get huffy over the author's constant reminder that you should probably reevaluate your thinking (I completely agree with her).

View all my reviews

35%

I needed a couple plague free days but then I read three in a row to catch up and now my mind is drowning in sores and poop.

Syphilis

“Let’s bring back syphilis because it makes people more creative."

This was an interesting chapter, how the syphilis epidemic mirrored the AIDs, with not wanting to talk about it, the condemnation of people who got it, and how pushing it the corners made it even more virulent. I liked how the author called out some historical figures (Abraham Lincoln!) for more than likely having it.

15 to 30 percent of people who don’t receive treatment, syphilis advances to the positively terrifying tertiary stage. Symptoms can include joint problems and serious headaches. Sufferers’irises can become inflamed, leading to vision problems and sometimes blindness. Others might experience tremors and seizures. Some can become partially paralyzed. Many also develop a condition called tabes dorsalis, which causes intense, shooting pain throughout the body as the nerves along the spinal cords degenerate. Neurosyphilis, when the disease invades the nervous system, can occur at any stage, though it’s most often associated with tertiary syphilis. It involves an inflammatory response in the brain that leads to the destruction of bundles of nerve fibers. In some cases, the symptoms of neurosyphilis are mild, like headaches. However, many patients experience mental problems, like bouts of mania, changes in personality, and severe dementia.

I thought the author did a better job of discussing the symptoms and giving us a better idea of what happens to the body and mind. I thought it was also interesting how she touched on the "suffering artist" thinking, the best creations come out of pain, kind of how some artists think drugs and alcohol are needed to reach their potential today.

Some of the wild cures were discussed, dangerously raising body temperature, arsenic, and malaria and what really works, penicillin, such the miracle drug. 

One of the interesting tidbits of this section was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a highly unethical study that I had vaguely heard about and seeing mentioned again, sent me off reading more about it. 

Tuberculosis

The disease is still around, it’s still contagious, and despite the fact that the vaccine costs approximately sixteen cents to produce, and $3.13 to buy, tuberculosis continues to ravage periphery countries. Millions of people worldwide die from tuberculosis every year—and it’s totally treatable.

This one was a little tough to read about because of how it still has a strong presence today. The romanticizing mentioned was incredibly sad, thinking about how women tried to unhealthily copy the look of suffers because the look was thought to be beautifully tragic. Women always pushed to conform to impossible beauty standards. 

It is very contagious. The bacterium is spread by droplets whenever sufferers cough or sneeze (or sing or laugh, for that matter). Those droplets are then inhaled by others. In some people, the bacterium remains latent for years.

Again, probably because it is a more modern disease, the author gave us more information the what and how. Highly contagious diseases like this seem so tragic to me because of people not knowing yet how it spreads and how they were sacrificial lambs for me. 

Between 1829 and 1845, 10 to 13 percent of white prisoners in large cities on the East Coast of the United States died of tuberculosis; the rate was even higher among black prisoners.

Indeed, about 4 million people were thought to have died from consumption in England and Wales alone between 1851 and 1910.

Not quite the Bubonic Plague or Small pox but still having an impact and the fact that people still die of it today when there is the Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine, angers me and makes me feel grateful I was born where I was. 

Cholera 

It is spread through ingesting other people’s infected defecated matter.

As an old Oregon Trail enthusiast, I know all about cholera and its devastating effects. Clean water, clean water, clean water. Again, forever grateful for being born where I was. Available clean water is something I don't even think about or have to question. 

Once you have drunk it without even knowing it, the cholera bacterium settles in the small intestine. There, it begins reproducing and forms a toxin called CTX, which covers the walls of the small intestines. Now, the main purpose of the small intestine is to keep you hydrated; it absorbs water and then sends it on to other areas of the body. However, when its walls are coated with cholera bacteria, it instead begins expelling water. The result is a white-flaked, watery diarrhea that is referred to as “rice stool.”

Not fun to read about and god awful to live I imagine. This is one that can boggle the mind because, of course, you need clean water but I only know that because of the work of John Snow (I'm a GOT watcher, so this name was wild). Going by the rest of the format of the book, I thought it was interesting how much the author focused on Snow, it seemed a little off how she kind of laid into his lifestyle but I guess it works for us to get to "know" him. If one thing can be said about this author, it's that she is not afraid to color her writing with her opinions. 

20%

Small Pox

Someone was hacking next to me today and I tried to hold my breath until I could run away from them. Reading about one plague a day is showing its consequences :/

A lone diseased Spaniard is believed to have introduced smallpox to the Incan society around 1525.

After being exposed to smallpox, the Aztec and Incan societies were devastated almost instantly. One year they were among the greatest civilizations in the world. The next year they basically didn’t exist.

Devastating. I thought the author did a better job with this section of the book, giving us a clearer understanding of the symptoms:

Once someone is infected they develop a fever—up to 104 degrees—which is sometimes accompanied by vomiting. Then they break out in a rash, which turns into bumpy pustules filled with clear liquid or pus. These later crust over and fall off, leaving pox marks on the skin.

and how it was combated: 

Variolation generally entailed finding someone suffering from smallpox, drawing blood or fluid from one of their pustules, and injecting it into an uninfected person.

Jenner called the technique vaccination, as vacca was the Latin word for “cow".

This is also the disease that we see reach into more of modern recorded history, so go figure :) The absolute devastation this caused is hard to read about, whole civilizations ended, with some help of Spaniards but still, makes you think about the edge we all rest on.

I enjoyed the more informative look into small pox, even though I already knew some it, milk maids saved the world!, but it was still kind of fun to see how people worked the problem and followed the trail from cow pox to vaccinations. I am also endlessly fascinated by immunity and how it can be passed on, which I thought the author did a good job simplifying and giving us a bare bones a to b explanation. 

Vaccinating most of the population protects the very young and vulnerable people of all ages who cannot be safely vaccinated.

If the author's sassy and sarcasm hit hard on Wakefield (wrote paper claiming vaccinations could cause autism) and in turn Jenny, I'm ok with that because paid for pseduo-science needs to be hit hard with the harm it can do.

Think of what it might have been like when 30 to 90 percent of your friends and family died, because that was the world before vaccines.

Vaccinations, they are needed and quite frankly, wanted by me.

15%

Dancing Plague

Their feet bled until you could see their bone.

Not an ideal situation to be in. This plague is probably the most confounding to me, I'm a proof, factual evidence person and the way the author presenting this one, leaves me baffled and intrigued. The author mentioned that some think mold might have been the cause but then says, she disagrees with that. She then kind of meanders around it being mass hysteria or psychological. I grasp the thinking behind mass hysteria but the descriptions of dancing to the point of death, have me thinking there had to be some source other than sadness or relief, which the author goes on to pseudo-claim, that would cause this kind of physicality. I know the human mind's strength is still not fully known but I still can't fully accept mass hysteria. 

Moreover witnesses consistently spoke of the victims as being entranced, seeing terrifying visions and behaving with wild, crazy abandon.

This is probably why I would be on team mold, some kind of hallucinogen from mold that seeped in through the feet sounds feasible. 

He thought the best treatment, if the condition was brought on by cursing, was to have the dancers make an image of themselves in wax (talented multitasking dancers!), project their thoughts onto the wax doll, and then set the figure on fire. If the disease was brought on by sexy thoughts or frivolity, the dancers should be kept in a dark room and fed only bread and water until they were too sad to have those thoughts anymore. If it was caused by a “corrupt imagination,” they should ingest opium (the basis for heroin) or alcohol.

These cures, I tell ya. The author accounts that people made pilgrimages to a mountain and were given red shoes to wear. Changing of shoes that maybe didn't have the mold or infection? This is where again, I wish the author moved from a more witty repertoire to more historical accounts, documentation, and current conclusions/thoughts. There were other dancing plagues recorded, how similar were their climates or environment? Anything gleaned from that?

course diseases occur independent of mental states, but it is also true that given enough stress, people’s internal miseries can manifest themselves physically.

I completely agree with this but in more of a grey way, I see limitations. The author talks about how people believed they were cured, so they were. When they were dancing to death? I don't know, I put more faith in the simple changing of shoes. 

“So their minds simply closed down, and they refused to see anymore—refused to see any more death, any more torture, any more rape, any more starvation.

The author tries to validate her mass hysteria diagnosis with comparisons to trauma victims experiencing mass blindness. In those cases, we have a general root cause and they are not physically acting in a way, dancing until their bones came out of their feet, that directly leads to their death. It was too much of an apples and oranges comparison for me. I also thought it was completely unfair to compare the townspeople's response to bubonic plague towns. Not as encompassing and while the people dancing had to unnerving to a certain extent, not as psychologically destroying as pus covered children banging on windows for help. It seemed the author wanted to lighten or bring more hopeful tone after the doom and gloom of the bubonic plague. It is refreshing how the people of Strasburg responded but I would have liked more inclusion to how their society was structured to point out why it may have been easier for them to do so.

I'm too cynical to buy into the "power of friendship" healed all. I do think happier people have a greater chance at survival but that is tied into a whole bunch of things like happier people tend to take care of their bodies in a more healthy way, symptoms and causes are very interwoven. I think it also is a disservice and cruel to completely link emotion to not surviving a disease; I do think it plays a part but smaller than the author wants to give it credit for here.

I leave this section with a pretty good on fire comment:

It’s perfectly possible to be smarter than everyone else and still be polite and even deferential—women have been doing it for centuries.

10%

Bubonic Plague

(Everyone's favorite ;)

The Florentine Marchionne di Coppo Stefani said that the pits looked like lasagna.

It is incomprehensible to me the sheer amount of death this plague caused.

If the plague spread to the lungs and became pneumonic, it could be transmitted from person to person through an infected cough. The plague would kill somewhere between 20 and 50 million people in the fourteenth century, or approximately 30 percent of Europe’s population.

30 percent. 3. 0. percent. Reading this section I almost teared up, the lack of knowledge along with fear and society crumbling around you must have been horrific.

There are stories about how common it was for people to leave bread and water at a sick relative’s bedside, tell them they were going out to fetch supplies, and then abandoning them. The dying could be seen through the city plaintively rapping at their windows, hoping someone would come to ease their suffering.

******

De Mussis describes the streets ringing with the cries of dying children who had been locked out of their homes,

******

Second, no one wanted to force their children into the streets. No one wanted to leave them to die alone. They did so only because doing otherwise would doom them also.

When I think of world ending disasters, sickness is a big one (I blame The Stand) for me and think of how today's society would withstand this. The thing about this plague is how devastating psychologically it must have been. 

Terror over the devastating disease and a lack of scientific knowledge, as well as some people’s truly evil tendency to prey upon people’s fears, resulted in safeguards that seem ludicrous today.

******

I realize that “Do No Harm” is the first rule of medicine, but “Don’t apply human shit to an open wound” seems like a good second one. Oh, and bloodletting didn’t help, either.

There will be no escaping poop in this book, will there? The author talks about cures banded about during the time, drinking urine, wine, and pus from the infected. Sign me up for wine! Again, because of the knowledge I have, it makes you want to scream at the people to simply practice hygiene but I guess thanks? to the bubonic plague (and shout-out to Nostradamus) I know that now. This section and plague seemed to focus more on society fear than structure.

Most people died within four days of exhibiting the first symptoms, and many died within twenty-four hours.

******

The 10 percent of those who recovered from the plague generally had robust and healthy immune system.

Here is where I wish the author had expanded, besides healthy immune systems, is there any known reason some survived or not, talking about genetic/dna wise? What about people who never contracted it? I would have liked more discussion on this aspect.

The World Health Organization reports that in 2013 there were 783 cases worldwide; 126 people died.

Fortunately, today the disease is generally treated with the antibiotic streptomycin and is curable so long as it is caught early.

Wasn't there someone in CO who got the bubonic plague a couple years ago? It is incredibly eerie to me that this still lingers around but knowing there is an antibiotic makes it better. I guess. The framework is obviously better now, if something like this hits again but (The Stand!) I can't help fear-mongering myself over it. Although, with my weak ass self, I'd be the first to go, you all have fun with the bodies in the street and the rape gangs.

Who's making Nostradamus'' magic rose pills for the group to try?

;)

Reading Update: 5%

Antonine Plague

As soon as the plague broke out, the population almost immediately abandoned calm, rational Stoicism in favor of believing in magic and killing Christians.

This is what encapsulates the true horror of plagues or sicknesses for me, the mass hysteria. The building up and spreading of people not being able to keep calm, hey I get it everyone is dying around you, and work the problem. The way fear breeds a willingness to stop critically thinking and devolve into easier, keep it out of my hands answers. Science doesn't always get it right, because of how the data is analyzed or perceived, but the use of evidence and facts is where I what I want to put my belief in.

In almost every plague throughout history, it takes a remarkably strong leader just to keep the bodies out of the streets.

This is so huge, along with how your society is structured. I can't imagine delegating, being in charge of the Roman populace at this time and being the one to keep it all together. It does make you think Marcus Aurelius deserves the hype. 

The Tiber River was also prone to flooding, which meant (forgive this description but there’s no other clear way to say it) that a river of shit would occasionally flow through the streets.

I have a healthy respect for our sanitation infrastructure but I still don't think it is enough. It rarely fails that when I read historical documents, the "river of shit" comes up and I want to die a thousand deaths (I probably would if I lived back then!) imagining the smell. Fire, humans greatest achievement? Maybe, but I do like me some plumbing.

“Even if we split the difference between the most impressive scholarly studies, we can’t get lower than a total mortality of 10 million.” It was probably higher! McLynn himself estimates the total death toll as around 18 million. At the height of the outbreak, slightly later in 189, Cassius Dio claimed it caused around two thousand deaths a day in Rome. 

Holy f*ck. You can see why people clung to magic and mysticism, the sheer horror of the amount of loss is unbelievable. Without the foundation of solid science and medicine, I can't imagine what people were thinking or dealing with. The whole not understanding, of what was happening or what the disease was, is hard for me to get in the mindset because we do have a framework for diseases now; to not know how to go about not getting sick is terrifying.  

 Personality-wise, you could think of him as the Donald Trump of ancient Rome.

Speaking of terrifying.

And despite what some breathtakingly stupid intellectuals would have you believe, the people and interests of the past weren’t necessarily smart and serious any more than the people and interests of the present are dumb and frivolous. Knowing about pop culture doesn’t make you dumb; it makes you a person who is interested in the world you live in.

The nostalgia affect, is always amusing; kids used to be respectful!, people are lazy today!, all content put out is crap now!. Feeling superior, fear of feeling left behind, or just generally curmudgeon because what you like isn't popular or relevant anymore is going to hit everyone but times, they do a change.

I generally like how the author is going about writing this, she gets a bit overly trying to be funny, sarcastic, light at times but I can see how the material could get dry for some without the breaks; keeps the pace going at a clip, too. 

Bonus:

As I'm not a hat wearer, but Raiden's drama side demanded to be flexed, we decided to dress the part for this book,

Can't wait to see what everyone else is thinking about this book so far!