on my bookshelf

I'm reading a book by Gina Kolata about the 1918 Flu (also called the "Spanish Flu"). Epidemiology long has been an interest of mine, so despite the dry-sounding topic, it's really quite fascinating.

I think it was something that grew out of reading "The Canterbury Tales," actually. Craig Rustici, our Chaucer professor, explained that England in Chaucer's day was experiencing massive social upheaval owing to the new upward mobility experienced by laborers, whose skills suddenly were in demand, owing to the effects of bubonic plague.

In other words, a disease that made its way from China to Europe along trade routes was a major contributor to the end of the Dark Ages, along with more conventional means of social change such as shifting philosophies and wars.

So while my interest is definitely a layman's -- I can't begin to tell you the molecular biology at
play in chickenpox, let alone in plague -- I can't help but find massive outbreaks of disease interesting because of their social consequences. In the case of the Spanish flu, it led to an entire generation overdosing themselves and their children on antibiotics, affected commerce and transit -- people avoided large crowds, where the risk of exposure to the killer flu was increased -- and also led to the Ford presidency imbroglio of vaccinating everyone to avoid a return of the Spanish flu, even though there was no scientific reason to fear such a return. (The specter was that powerful.)

Kolata's been reviled by those covering the newspaper industry and science reporting for her brias and inaccuracies in her reporting, and deservedly so, but she writes engagingly and captures the personalities of the people she's writing about in this book. I have another book of hers here about the events leading up to the cloned sheep Dolly, but haven't read it yet.