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lizzer's review
5.0
Maybe a weird pick to read during an actual pandemic, maybe not. Either way, moments of disbelief, of anger, and of despair as listening just convinced me that we are always doomed to repeat the failures of our predecessors. May our children and our children's children be better, do better, than we have been and done.
myreaderacct's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.75
Reading a 20-year old book post COVID was an almost eerie experience. Barry does a good job of explaining the 1918 pandemic and the politics around it, but the book could have done with a tighter editor as Barry tends to go off on semi-relevant tangents (the book doesn't even really begin to cover the pandemic until a third of the way in). The audiobook narrator was incredibly flat--I suggest reading it over listening if possible.
daeus's review
4.0
It's crazy how far and how fast medicine became modernized after almost a thousand years of very little changing. Previously most doctors would graduate without seeing any patients or being in a lab, dissecting a cadaver, etc. The author is clearly passionate and sometimes almost manic about some key figures and definitely takes a strong point of view. The book is primarily focused on some key people who figured out how to apply the scientific method to medicine and clinical research in a scalable way along with modernize the education and innovation of the medical field. The ending describing vulnerabilities to a potential pandemic that are chillingly accurate to the coronavirus.
Overall the book is kind of windy/changes direction a lot, but I think its still worth the journey for all the insights into the time period, modern science, the 1918 pandemic and its legacy.
There was very little told in stories or news since so much was censored due to war propaganda. But in Australia where the news was more free (and the pandemic was relatively mild), people simply called it the plague, similar to the black plague that ravaged Europe.
Quotes
- "Science is not democratic, votes do not matter."
- "It was the progressive era. Life was becoming organized, rationalized, specialized. In every field, professionals were emerging, routing the ideas of the Jacksonian period when state legislators deemed that licensing even physicians was anti-democratic."
- "The largest single donor remained the Rockefeller foundation...Welsh had turned the hopkins model into a force... he and colleagues...had in effect first formed an elite group of senior officers of an army. Then in an amazingly brief time they had revolutionized american medicine. Created and expanded the officer core and begun training their army. An army of scientists and scientifically grounded physicians." So much progress and preparation still led the world to be laid out by the 1918 pandemic.
- "For the first time, modern humanity, a humanity practicing the modern scientific method, would confront nature [epidemic] in its fullest rage."
- "Influenza... killed enough to depress the average life expectancy in the US by more than 10 years."
- "The killer was not the virus, but the massive immune response itself." This was primarily why young people were impacted heavily, not just the young and elderly.
- "Ultimately, if the researchers succeeds, a flood of colleagues will pave roads over the path laid, and those roads will be orderly and straight, taking an investigator in minutes to a place the pioneer spent months or years looking for."
- "How does one know when to persist? When to continue to try to make an experiment work? When to make adjustments? And when finally to abandon ....the solution?.... the question is one of judgement. For the distinguishing element in science is not intelligence, but judgment. Or perhaps it is simply luck.... How does one know...? When one is on the edge, one cannot know, one can only test."
- "The first casualty when war comes is truth." (Quotes from someone).
- "[Avery] started his search looking for a cure for pneumonia and ended up... opening the field of molecular biology." Oswald Avery didn't win the nobel prize, but he discovered the value/focus of DNA.
- "A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."
Overall the book is kind of windy/changes direction a lot, but I think its still worth the journey for all the insights into the time period, modern science, the 1918 pandemic and its legacy.
There was very little told in stories or news since so much was censored due to war propaganda. But in Australia where the news was more free (and the pandemic was relatively mild), people simply called it the plague, similar to the black plague that ravaged Europe.
Quotes
- "Science is not democratic, votes do not matter."
- "It was the progressive era. Life was becoming organized, rationalized, specialized. In every field, professionals were emerging, routing the ideas of the Jacksonian period when state legislators deemed that licensing even physicians was anti-democratic."
- "The largest single donor remained the Rockefeller foundation...Welsh had turned the hopkins model into a force... he and colleagues...had in effect first formed an elite group of senior officers of an army. Then in an amazingly brief time they had revolutionized american medicine. Created and expanded the officer core and begun training their army. An army of scientists and scientifically grounded physicians." So much progress and preparation still led the world to be laid out by the 1918 pandemic.
- "For the first time, modern humanity, a humanity practicing the modern scientific method, would confront nature [epidemic] in its fullest rage."
- "Influenza... killed enough to depress the average life expectancy in the US by more than 10 years."
- "The killer was not the virus, but the massive immune response itself." This was primarily why young people were impacted heavily, not just the young and elderly.
- "Ultimately, if the researchers succeeds, a flood of colleagues will pave roads over the path laid, and those roads will be orderly and straight, taking an investigator in minutes to a place the pioneer spent months or years looking for."
- "How does one know when to persist? When to continue to try to make an experiment work? When to make adjustments? And when finally to abandon ....the solution?.... the question is one of judgement. For the distinguishing element in science is not intelligence, but judgment. Or perhaps it is simply luck.... How does one know...? When one is on the edge, one cannot know, one can only test."
- "The first casualty when war comes is truth." (Quotes from someone).
- "[Avery] started his search looking for a cure for pneumonia and ended up... opening the field of molecular biology." Oswald Avery didn't win the nobel prize, but he discovered the value/focus of DNA.
- "A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."
faith2teach's review
3.0
1918 influenza- like reading about COVID 19. Censorship, bad choices, weird remedies. Only recommend to those really interested in disease. Lots of science info.
pinklemonrade's review
4.0
Way too long with a lot of unnecessary information, but so interesting, especially in the wake of this pandemic.
kittietta's review
4.0
Very educational!
While a bit dry in spots the book was very interesting and educational. Also a little relevant to today's issues with covid-19 ( and the polittics..hmmm). Heped me understand how a virus works. Rated a 4 star
While a bit dry in spots the book was very interesting and educational. Also a little relevant to today's issues with covid-19 ( and the polittics..hmmm). Heped me understand how a virus works. Rated a 4 star