Book Description
Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamburg, while most of Europewas left almost unscathed? As Richard J. Evans explains, it was largely because the townwas a "free city" within Germany that was governed by the "English" ideals of laissez- faire. The absence of an effective public-health policy combined with ill-founded medicaltheories and the miserable living conditions of the poor to create a scene ripe for tragedy.The story of the "cholera years" is, in Richard Evans's hands, tragically revealing of theage's social inequalities and governmental pitilessness and incompetence; it also offersdisquieting parallels with the world's public-health landscape today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Social history at its best
This book by an eminent social historian of Germany tells the story of the cholera epidemic in late nineteenth-century Hamburg.Using an excellent mixture of local politics, history of science, traditional political history, and demographics, Evans shows how the attempts of local politicians to resist pressure from Berlin during the years of unification led to thousands of deaths in Hamburg due to an outdated water system, while residents in bordering Altona were spared.The story shows the interaction of politics with the history of science and technology, as rival theories about cholera -- the environmental "miasmic" theory and the infectious disease theory advocated by Robert Koch in the Prussian ministry of health -- were debated.A state-of-the art work of historiography that's also a gripping read, written in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic.It's really too bad that the paperback went out of print ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Social Science & Medicine, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Book Description
This is a 3-in-1 reference book. It gives a complete medical dictionary covering hundreds of terms and expressions relating to cholera. It also gives extensive lists of bibliographic citations. Finally, it provides information to users on how to update their knowledge using various Internet resources. The book is designed for physicians, medical students preparing for Board examinations, medical researchers, and patients who want to become familiar with research dedicated to cholera.If your time is valuable, this book is for you. First, you will not waste time searching the Internet while missing a lot of relevant information. Second, the book also saves you time indexing and defining entries. Finally, you will not waste time and money printing hundreds of web pages.Download Description
This is a 3-in-1 reference book. It gives a complete medical dictionary covering hundreds of terms and expressions relating to cholera. It also gives extensive lists of bibliographic citations. Finally, it provides information to users on how to update their knowledge using various Internet resources. The book is designed for physicians, medical students preparing for Board examinations, medical researchers, and patients who want to become familiar with research dedicated to cholera. If your time is valuable, this book is for you. First, you will not waste time searching the Internet while missing a lot of relevant information. Second, the book also saves you time indexing and defining entries. Finally, you will not waste time and money printing hundreds of web pages. ... Read more

Book Description
Cholera terrified and fascinated nineteenth-century Europeans more than any other modern disease. Its symptoms were gruesome, its sources were mysterious, and it tended to strike poor neighborhoods hardest. In this insightful cultural history, Catherine Kudlick explores the dynamics of class relations through an investigation of the responses to two cholera epidemics in Paris.
While Paris climbed toward the height of its urban and industrial growth, two outbreaks of the disease ravaged the capital, one in 1832, the other in 1849. Despite the similarity of the epidemics, the first outbreak was met with general frenzy and far greater attention in the press, popular literature and personal accounts, while the second was greeted with relative silence. Finding no compelling evidence for improved medical knowledge, changes in the Paris environment, or desensitization of Parisians, Kudlick looks to the evolution of the French revolutionary tradition and the emergence of the Parisian bourgeoisie for answers. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Medical Update, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on February 1, 1995. The length of the article is 525 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Cholera: the reappearance of a vanished disease.
Publication: Medical Update (Newsletter)
Date: February 1, 1995
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: v18Issue: n8Page: p4(2)

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A nice introduction that whets the appetitie for more
"Quinine and Quarantine: Missouri Medicine through the Years," by Loren Humphrey, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, MO, 2000.This 128 p paperback is another of the Missouri Heritage Reader series, intended for new adult readers, presumably for English as a second language training.As such, Quinine and Quarantine provides 12 articles (plus introductions), most six to eight pages in length, which survey the subject.Most articles are illustrated with black and white photographs from archive collections.The book is indexed, and contains a two page annotated list for additional reading, but no references.

In some ways this volume does an excellent job covering an extensive complex subject, ie the history of medicine, from the Missouri point of view.Hence, we begin in 1799, in the days of the French trappers and early pioneers, when purgatives and bloodletting were the usual treatments for most conditions.Quinine was one of the few effective medicines when used to treat malaria.Most other treatments had little value.Small pox vaccinations were available, but there was little understanding of germs as the cause of wound infection, and most surgery was a death sentence.Coverage ends in 1997, with passage of the state's Managed Care Reform Act, and an item mentioning heart transplants and rumors that celebrities are given preferential access to limited supplies of organs.

The history of medical education is especially well covered.In the early days, the best physicians trained in Europe, but they were rarely found on the frontier.Instead, most physicians trained as apprentices.The book takes us through the early medical schools.St. Louis University chartered in 1832, established a medical school in 1841.Missouri Medical College in St. Louis, started as a branch of Kemper College (founded 1838), affiliated with University of Missouri in 1847.Kansas City Medical College opened in 1869.American School of Osteopathy, Macon Co., was chartered in1884.Licensing of physicians began in Missouri in 1883.As late as 1923, diploma mills would issue medical degrees for a fee.A Kansas City reporter got one that year from Kansas City College of Medicine.

Missouri colleges were founded as follows: Christian College in Columbia, 1851; Culver-Stockton founded as Christian College of Canton, 1853; Westminster College, Fulton, 1853; Washington University, founded as Eliot Seminary, 1851; Stephens College founded as Columbia Female Baptist College, 1857; Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, 1870; Central State Teachers College, Warrensburg, 1871; Southwest State Teachers College, Cape Girardeau, 1873; Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, 1890.St Louis University purchased Marion-Simms Beaumont Medical School in 1903 for its medical school.Barnes Hospital, teaching hospital for Washington University opened in 1915.

Cholera epidemics are covered quite well.Asian cholera is a highly contagious diarrheal disease spread by drinking contaminated water.It first appeared in the US in about 1820 and spread throughout the country-usually along transportation routes during the steamboat era-as a series of epidemics.During epidemics death rates might rise to as much as 50% of the population.St. Louis was repeatedly devastated, especially in 1849 and again in 1866.

Cholera played a role in the understanding of germs as a cause of disease when John Snow traced an out break in London to a single contaminated well (1854).Improvements in public health-reliable water supplies and sewers-were major factors in stopping the epidemics, but strangely the book mentions the subject of public water supplies only briefly.The role of quarantine and the sanitary societies who helped care for Civil War soldiers in hospitals are noted.

The book introduces the subject of antibiotics and gives some description to Sir Alexander Flemming's discovery of penicillin, but the extensive work at USDAs Peoria, IL laboratory to make it practical during World War II is not mentioned.No mention is made of Missouri's pharmaceutical participants.Most would name Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, who made ether anesthetic commercially available and operated an "ether lab" to explore safe handling and additional commercial uses for this extremely flammable agent.Mallinckrodt is also one of two licensed producers of morphine in the US, and is a leading manufacturer of the active ingredient in Tylenol.Monsanto, headquartered in St. Louis, became the world's largest producer of bulk aspirin and also invented Celebrex.

The book has done a remarkably good job of covering a complex subject in a compact survey form.Readers will find it a useful introduction, but will want to check other sources for the complete story of penicillin, the development of germ theory (I recommend Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruit, 1926), and measures to improve public health.
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Book Description
How cholera epidemics affected Victorian perceptions of the body and the nation. ... Read more