000			04929 a2200229 4500
008			240517b 2023|||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9781471169908 (PB)
041			_aeng
080			_a614.4 _bSCH
100			_aSchama, Simon
245			_aForeign Bodies _b: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations
260			_bSimon & Schuster _c2023 _aNew York
300			_axii, 465p. _bill.
504			_aIncludes Index
505			_a1. East to west: smallpox 2. West to east: cholera 3. Power and pestilence: plague
520			_aThis splendid and often moving work of history... Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colourful detail, serious analysis and wryly amusing asides' Daily Telegraph 'Superb' Observer 'Extraordinary... A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period... Makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past' Guardian 'This is history of the best sort - humanly engaged but never sentimental' Mail on Sunday Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before. Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope - in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums - are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai. At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine. A gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as 'the saviour of mankind' for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world's first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice. Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, 'there are no foreigners, only familiars' Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before. Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai. At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine. A gun-toting Jewish student in Odessa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as 'the saviour of mankind' for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world's first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice. Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, 'there are no foreigners, only familiars'.
650			_aPlague
650			_aEpidemic
650			_aVaccine
690			_aComputational Biology
942			_cBK
999			_c60300 _d60300