Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

This is an entertaining and enlightening overview of widespread medical catastrophes from antiquity to today. Delightfully narrated by Gabra Zackman, there is a tone here between Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks. Sacks is explicitly covered in the parts about the scarily recent usage of the drug L-Dopa administered to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica ("EL"). Also covered is the fascinating and mysterious dancing plague. Here Wright suggests the importance of compassion compared to the heartless treatment of bubonic plague victims, including home invasions from shovel-wielding gravediggers. In an overview of syphilis we read of the decline of the Inca and rise of the No Nose Club. We also meet show more the notorious Typhoid Mary and hear details of perhaps the most senseless plague on humanity: Freeman's lobotomies. show less

This nonfiction account of the worst plagues in history is shockingly funny. Wright shares the facts, but with a dark sense of humor that I loved. She is honest about her bias against certain leaders and doctors who made horrific choices. Who knew that reading about plagues could be so incredibly entertaining?

“Pretending any historical age before proper indoor plumbing was a glorious epoch is a ludicrous delusion.”

“Feel free to start using Walter Jackson Freeman II as an insult directed toward people you hate. Almost no one will get the reference, but if I am in the room we’ll high-five and it will be awesome.”

“Knowing about pop culture doesn’t make you dumb; it makes you a person who is interested in the world you live show more in. Besides, it is impossible to believe that everyone in the past was a serious figure meriting great respect once you learn that one guy thought
tubercular patients should take up new careers as alligator hunters.” show less

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I sure didn't expect the kind of humor that had me laughing out loud over descriptions of plagues and diseases. But please don't think Wright makes light of suffering; that's the last thing she would do. Rather, she shows us how kindness can make a difference to people suffering from illness.

She points up the difference between reactions to bubonic plague in Europe, where even children are abandoned by their parents when they fall ill, and the significant difference Father Damian made to the lives of the lepers to whom he ministered, and with whom he lived. She shows us how, in the case of The Dancing Plague, (the nature of which is still unknown) the kindness and consideration shown to the show more sufferers by their fellow citizens may well have eased their suffering.

I think it's telling that the most horrific things that Wright discusses are human actions. She details the laws against warning people of the Spanish Flu during WWI, laws which certainly cost more lives. And the worst is the plague of lobotomies performed in the early to mid 20th century. In the U.S., most were performed by Dr. Walter Freeman, a neuropsychiatrist who was not a surgeon and had no business performing invasive procedures on anyone. Freeman "sold" lobotomies as cure-alls, and even once performed one on a patient who had changed his mind. Freeman went to his hotel, chased him around the room, knocked him out with his electro-shock equipment and went ahead with the procedure in spite of the lack of consent.

Disease is a part of life. Even so, many of the older diseases are forgotten now in the era of vaccines and antibiotics. But Wright warns that things like Spanish Flu could still recur in the future. She also comes down hard on the anti-vaxxers, as she should, because they embrace pseudo-science to the danger of the rest of us.

But still, Wright manages to take a light-hearted approach to all this. She's the sort of person you want to be sitting with at a party, smart, well-informed, hilariously funny, thoughtful, and one heck of a story-teller. On the strength of this book, I want to read her others. All of them! (I think there are only three in total, but she's young; barring a nasty bout of plague she should be writing for a long time yet.)

If you're fascinated by the history of disease and how it shaped our world, this is a book you should read. show less

I cannot remember who recommended Get Well Soon to me, but I am forever in that person’s debt because it will go down as one of my favorite audiobooks of all time. It has everything I love in books. It is informative and entertaining, full of weird facts and scary statistics. Adding to all of that is Gabra Zackman’s narration, which exudes sarcasm and wit as well as the horror and indignation at these plagues and the responses to them.

Laughing while horrified, I marvel at Ms. Wright’s ability to turn these most horrible outbreaks in human history into morality lessons without making them sound like a sermon. Her willingness to speak hard truths – about government responses, about anti-vaccine advocates, etc. – are made all the show more more compelling by the honesty infused into her words and the don’t-give-a-shit attitude she expresses. Her use of anecdotes humanizes the distant past and reminds everyone that diseases have a tendency to return when we become complacent. The end effect is a book that educates but maintains a level of levity to offset the gruesome and disturbing details.

The details ARE disturbing, and Ms. Wright minces no words when describing anything. From the cesspools of London to the horrifying symptoms of tertiary syphilis to the causes of cholera and polio, the facts are revolting on so many levels. The faint of heart might want to shy away from any book that freely talks about fecal matter in drinking water and pus, but the information the book provides is too important to ignore. The thing about using blunt language to describe something awful though is that you find yourself getting over your disgust rather quickly. Your nausea is nothing in light of the suffering of others, and Ms. Wright uses this to her advantage.

If anything, you walk away from Get Well Soon with a greater appreciation for anyone who survived until the discovery of penicillin and the use of vaccinations. She makes you appreciate the drugs we take for granted because they really have altered the history of man by making it possible to live longer, healthier lives. At the same time, you realize how complacent we continue to be about the threat of a plague and how that complacency could risk your life or those of your loved ones. Get Well Soon is as much a cautionary tale as it is an educational one, and with an anti-vaxxer in the White House, her message is ever more important. Thankfully, Ms. Wright makes the whole thing so damn entertaining that you can’t help but enjoy every second of it. show less

The author takes a subject that you would expect to be depressing and makes it both entertaining and informative. You will still be disturbed by the massive suffering caused by these plagues, but you will be entertained as well.

It is also amazing to read the chapter about the spanish flu pandemic. Its as if the current U.S. government treated the response to that pandemic as a how-to guide rather than something that was a massive failure.

Can a book about diseases be utterly charming and often hilarious? It turns out that if the author is Jennifer Wright, the answer is yes.

This compilation of short histories of some of the worst plagues in history is punctuated (literally) by lots of italics, exclamation points, jokes, contemporary references, sarcasm, and humorous epigraphs before each chapter. But the subject matter is deadly.

Topics include the Bubonic plague, smallpox, polio, the great influenza epidemic of 1918, and the “man-made” plague of lobotomies, inter alia.

Wright also includes information on how these diseases impacted history. For example, it is estimated that smallpox killed around 90 percent of the native people of the Americas, clearing the path for show more the great land grab by Europeans.

It is not so well known that during World War I, forty thousand American soldiers were killed by what was called the “Spanish flu” (she explains how it got this name). For perspective, she points out, “that’s only seven thousand fewer American soldiers than were killed in combat in Vietnam.” In one month alone, October of 1918, 195,000 people died of the Spanish flu. It was the deadliest month in U.S. history. Why did it get so bad so fast? She explains that too.

She comes back several times in her book to the subject of vaccination, stating:

“Vaccination is one of the best things that has happened to civilization. Empires toppled like sandcastles in the wake of diseases we do not give a second thought to today.”

She addresses current fears about vaccines, which she considers to be not only scientifically baseless but dangerous - explaining:

“. . . some vaccines contain an extremely diluted amount of formaldehyde, which sounds scary, as formaldehyde in large doses is linked to cancer. However, formaldehyde also occurs naturally in your body and helps you metabolize food. The amount you would find in a vaccine. . . [is less than you would find in an average apple.]”

It is shocking to learn that Zimbabwe now has a higher immunization rate for one-year-olds against measles than the United States does. So do 112 other countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. is down to 91 percent vaccination rate for measles, which, according to the WHO, makes us much more vulnerable to outbreaks:

“Refusing to vaccinate puts at risk not just your children but the people in our communities who most require our protection.”

But does a “cure” ever cause more harm than good? She does explore when that happens in a chapter on lobotomies, which are intentional partial destructions of the brain, and “the scariest procedure that you never want performed.” Approximately 40,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States between the 1930s and the 1970s. As Wrights avers, “. . . this was one of the darkest chapters in American medical history.”

She ends with the AIDS crisis, lamenting that we did not learn the lessons of history in fighting it, in particular that the issue of “morals” or “character” has nothing to do with the cause of diseases. She implores us to become wiser after “the horrible mismanagement of the AIDS crisis":

“We know what works and what doesn’t! Be smarter, please, please, be smarter, be kinder, be kinder and smarter, I am begging you.”

Evaluation: This book is informative and lively, and combines laugh-out-loud moments with important messages. It is an entertaining way to learn a part of history often neglected but more consequential to the rise and fall of civilizations than you would expect. show less

Very entertaining and full of some off-beat facts about the worst plagues in history. Wright makes these moments in time personal by introducing us to some of the people who suffered through the different plagues and forcing us to recognize the human cost of these diseases and lack of treatments, rather than focusing just on the symptoms and carnage of plagues. Word to the wise, there are gross moments; it is still a book about horrible diseases. But a FUN book about horrible diseases.