Barry, John M. - The Great Influenza (Part I)
Wed, Apr. 15th, 2020 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI am not sure anyone else is interested, but Rachel and I are doing Pandemic Book Club! Come join if you are interested as well!
To give you a sense of my brain, I actually read 2/3 of The Great Influenza several months prior to the coronavirus and also listen to podcasts like This Podcast Will Kill You for fun.
Anyway! On to Part I: The Warriors!
I remembered that this book got off to a slow start, and I stand by that judgment. Barry opens with an attention-getting prologue, describing one scientist's encounter with people struck down by the 1918 influenza, particularly emphasizing how deadly it was in young people, and how people would be so short of breath that they would literally turn blue or even close to black due to lack of oxygen.
...and then he goes back to the founding of Johns Hopkins. And then to establish the importance of Johns Hopkins, he basically ends up retelling the history of Western medicine from Galen and the four humors. Which I kind of knew about? And it's a bit of a distraction from Johns Hopkins, as I feel you could establish its importance by just noting that it was the first medical research institution in the US at a time when American medical schools basically granted anyone who could pay a medical degree and germ theory was not the widely accepted consensus.
...and then he goes on to talk about several notable scientists, none of whose names I can remember, even though I have actually read 2/3 of the book. As Rachel notes, Barry has a giant crush on William Welch, one of the founders at Johns Hopkins, but mostly goes on to talk about the scientific accomplishments of Welch's students. I get that he is trying to establish Welch as the connecting factor, but given that Barry himself notes that Welch did not have the concentration to pursue significant scientific questions, it feels very disjointed.
I feel this section would have been much more interesting if I had some sense of who all the people were in terms of the 1918 pandemic. I think Barry establishes that a bit later on, but I did get to some of the book that discusses how the pandemic influenced medical science in America, and it's still hard drawing the connections with the people in this section of the book.
Anyway, the pandemic is next! That should be much more interesting.
-rachelmanija's review of Part I
To give you a sense of my brain, I actually read 2/3 of The Great Influenza several months prior to the coronavirus and also listen to podcasts like This Podcast Will Kill You for fun.
Anyway! On to Part I: The Warriors!
I remembered that this book got off to a slow start, and I stand by that judgment. Barry opens with an attention-getting prologue, describing one scientist's encounter with people struck down by the 1918 influenza, particularly emphasizing how deadly it was in young people, and how people would be so short of breath that they would literally turn blue or even close to black due to lack of oxygen.
...and then he goes back to the founding of Johns Hopkins. And then to establish the importance of Johns Hopkins, he basically ends up retelling the history of Western medicine from Galen and the four humors. Which I kind of knew about? And it's a bit of a distraction from Johns Hopkins, as I feel you could establish its importance by just noting that it was the first medical research institution in the US at a time when American medical schools basically granted anyone who could pay a medical degree and germ theory was not the widely accepted consensus.
...and then he goes on to talk about several notable scientists, none of whose names I can remember, even though I have actually read 2/3 of the book. As Rachel notes, Barry has a giant crush on William Welch, one of the founders at Johns Hopkins, but mostly goes on to talk about the scientific accomplishments of Welch's students. I get that he is trying to establish Welch as the connecting factor, but given that Barry himself notes that Welch did not have the concentration to pursue significant scientific questions, it feels very disjointed.
I feel this section would have been much more interesting if I had some sense of who all the people were in terms of the 1918 pandemic. I think Barry establishes that a bit later on, but I did get to some of the book that discusses how the pandemic influenced medical science in America, and it's still hard drawing the connections with the people in this section of the book.
Anyway, the pandemic is next! That should be much more interesting.
-
rachelmanija's review of Part I