A Summer Plague by Tony Gould

A Summer Plague by Tony Gould

This work is a comprehensive account of the poliomyelitis epidemic. It takes the story from the first major outbreak of "Infantile Paralysis" in New York in 1916 - which induced panic on a scale reminiscent of the great plagues of history - through to its lingering aftermath in the shape of the so-called, and still mysterious Post-Polio Syndrome. This account combines several strands - biographical, political and social - as well as clinical and microbiological. It focuses on those individuals who were influential in the treatment and "conquest" of polio - from the most celebrated polio sufferer of all, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who set up his own hydrotherapy centre at Warm Springs in Georgia - to the scientific rivals, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, caught up in the race to produce a viable vaccine. The story also features John Enders, the Nobel prizewinner who made the crucial breakthrough in the laboratory; FDR's lieutenant, Basil O'Connor, whose "March of Dimes" became a byword for successful fund-raising; and Sister Elizabeth Kenny, the nurse from the Australian outback who challenged medical orthodoxy and invented "miracle" cures. In Britain, despite ten years of increasingly severe outbreaks, it took the death from bulbar polio in 1959 of an international footballer, Jeff Hall, to etch the importance of polio prevention on people's minds. The second part of this book examines the experiences of polio survivors on both sides of the Atlantic and concludes with a moving autobiographical account of the disease and resulting disability.

Tony Gould is a writer, critic, and former books editor of New Society. His most recent book is Death in Chile: A Memoir and a Journey.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780300062922
ISBN 10	0300062923
Titel	A Summer Plague
Autor	Tony Gould
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Yale University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	1995-07-26
Seitenanzahl	382
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar