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Author: Michael Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-06-18
Total Pages: 437
ISBN-13: 0521765676
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA history of the global spread of vaccination during the Napoleonic Wars, when millions of children were saved from smallpox.
Author: D. A. Henderson, M.D.
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2009-09-25
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 161592230X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor more than 3000 years, hundreds of millions of people have died or been left permanently scarred or blind by the relentless, incurable disease called smallpox. In 1967, Dr. D.A. Henderson became director of a worldwide campaign to eliminate this disease from the face of the earth. This spellbinding book is Dr. Henderson’s personal story of how he led the World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate smallpox—the only disease in history to have been deliberately eliminated. Some have called this feat "the greatest scientific and humanitarian achievement of the past century." In a lively, engrossing narrative, Dr. Henderson makes it clear that the gargantuan international effort involved more than straightforward mass vaccination. He and his staff had to cope with civil wars, floods, impassable roads, and refugees as well as formidable bureaucratic and cultural obstacles, shortages of local health personnel and meager budgets. Countries across the world joined in the effort; the United States and the Soviet Union worked together through the darkest cold war days; and professionals from more than 70 nations served as WHO field staff. On October 26, 1976, the last case of smallpox occurred. The disease that annually had killed two million people or more had been vanquished–and in just over ten years. The story did not end there. Dr. Henderson recounts in vivid detail the continuing struggle over whether to destroy the remaining virus in the two laboratories still that held it. Then came the startling discovery that the Soviet Union had been experimenting with smallpox virus as a biological weapon and producing it in large quantities. The threat of its possible use by a rogue nation or a terrorist has had to be taken seriously and Dr. Henderson has been a central figure in plans for coping with it. New methods for mass smallpox vaccination were so successful that he sought to expand the program of smallpox immunization to include polio, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus vaccines. That program now reaches more than four out of five children in the world and is eradicating poliomyelitis. This unique book is to be treasured—a personal and true story that proves that through cooperation and perseverance the most daunting of obstacles can be overcome.
Author: Elizabeth A. Fenn
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2002-10-02
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 9780809078219
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet little is known about it. Fenn reveals how deeply "variola" affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America. Illustrations.
Author: William H. Foege
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2011-06-06
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 0520268369
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Bill Foege takes us inside the world's greatest public health triumph: the eradication of smallpox. It's a story of true determination, passion and courage. The story of smallpox should encourage all of us to continue the critical work of worldwide disease eradication.”--Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “Bill Foege is one of the public health giants of our times. He was responsible for the design of the campaign that eradicated smallpox—the most important global health achievement in history and possibly the greatest feat in any field of international cooperation. His insights into the nature of this major event will undoubtedly help to meet the global health challenges of the 21st century.”—Julio Frenk, M.D, PhD, Dean, Harvard School of Public Health “The eradication of a disease has long been the holy grail of global health and Bill Foege found it: more than any other person, he was responsible for the eradication of smallpox from the face of the earth. This is a story told by a remarkably humble man, about the extraordinary coalition that he helped to build, and the most impressive global health accomplishment the world has ever seen.”—Mark Rosenberg, author of Real Collaboration: What It Takes for Global Health to Succeed “I am thrilled that Bill Foege, one of the great heroes of the smallpox eradication campaign, has written this important book. It tells a beautiful human story of an incredible public health triumph, and is full of lessons that could be applied to many of the global challenges we face today.”—Helene D. Gayle MD, President and CEO, CARE USA “Bill Foege’s House on Fire is the first-hand account of how a revised strategy to eradicate smallpox was tested, validated, and applied. Without the global adoption of this new surveillance strategy, the final deathblow to this longtime global menace might never have been dealt.”—Adetokunbo O. Lucas, MD, DSc, author of It Was The Best of Times: From Local to Global Health “Smallpox is the most devastating disease the world has known, as it destroyed lives and shaped history over the centuries. House on Fire provides a day-to-day account by my friend Dr. Bill Foege of the battle required to defeat this wily and diabolic virus."--President Jimmy Carter
Author: Michael Willrich
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-03-31
Total Pages: 511
ISBN-13: 1101476222
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox, award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights. At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease. As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox, Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.
Author: Bob H. Reinhardt
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2015-06-24
Total Pages: 287
ISBN-13: 1469624109
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy the mid-twentieth century, smallpox had vanished from North America and Europe but continued to persist throughout Africa, Asia, and South America. In 1965, the United States joined an international effort to eradicate the disease, and after fifteen years of steady progress, the effort succeeded. Bob H. Reinhardt demonstrates that the fight against smallpox drew American liberals into new and complex relationships in the global Cold War, as he narrates the history of the only cooperative international effort to successfully eliminate a human disease. Unlike other works that have chronicled the fight against smallpox by offering a "biography" of the disease or employing a triumphalist narrative of a public health victory, The End of a Global Pox examines the eradication program as a complex exercise of American power. Reinhardt draws on methods from environmental, medical, and political history to interpret the global eradication effort as an extension of U.S. technological, medical, and political power. This book demonstrates the far-reaching manifestations of American liberalism and Cold War ideology and sheds new light on the history of global public health and development.
Author: Jonathan B. Tucker
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780802139399
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA history of one of the world's deadliest diseases traces the influence of the smallpox plague on the course of human civilization, describes Jenner's creation of a vaccine against it and the World Health Organization's global efforts to eradicate it, and examines the dangers it still poses today as
Author: Andrew M. Wehrman
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2022-12-06
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 1421444674
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNow an LA Times Book Prize finalist: a timely and fascinating account of the raucous public demand for smallpox inoculation during the American Revolution and the origin of vaccination in the United States. Finalist of the LA Times Book Prize for History by the LA Times The Revolutionary War broke out during a smallpox epidemic, and in response, General George Washington ordered the inoculation of the Continental Army. But Washington did not have to convince fearful colonists to protect themselves against smallpox—they were the ones demanding it. In The Contagion of Liberty, Andrew M. Wehrman describes a revolution within a revolution, where the violent insistence for freedom from disease ultimately helped American colonists achieve independence from Great Britain. Inoculation, a shocking procedure introduced to America by an enslaved African, became the most sought-after medical procedure of the eighteenth century. The difficulty lay in providing it to all Americans and not just the fortunate few. Across the colonies, poor Americans rioted for equal access to medicine, while cities and towns shut down for quarantines. In Marblehead, Massachusetts, sailors burned down an expensive private hospital just weeks after the Boston Tea Party. This thought-provoking history offers a new dimension to our understanding of both the American Revolution and the origins of public health in the United States. The miraculous discovery of vaccination in the early 1800s posed new challenges that upended the revolutionaries' dream of disease eradication, and Wehrman reveals that the quintessentially American rejection of universal health care systems has deeper roots than previously known. During a time when some of the loudest voices in the United States are those clamoring against efforts to vaccinate, this richly documented book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of medicine and politics, or who has questioned government action (or lack thereof) during a pandemic.
Author: Arthur Allen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2008-05-17
Total Pages: 542
ISBN-13: 1324036354
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"A timely, fair-minded and crisply written account."—New York Times Book Review Vaccine juxtaposes the stories of brilliant scientists with the industry's struggle to produce safe, effective, and profitable vaccines. It focuses on the role of military and medical authority in the introduction of vaccines and looks at why some parents have resisted this authority. Political and social intrigue have often accompanied vaccination—from the divisive introduction of smallpox inoculation in colonial Boston to the 9,000 lawsuits recently filed by parents convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism. With narrative grace and investigative journalism, Arthur Allen reveals a history illuminated by hope and shrouded by controversy, and he sheds new light on changing notions of health, risk, and the common good.
Author: S.L. Kotar
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2013-04-19
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 0786493275
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScientifically known as Variola major, the deadliest form of smallpox has plagued mankind since "time immemorial." This text chronicles the worldwide effects of the killer disease, with particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries, including the devastations of the "speckled disease" during great armed conflicts. Specific attention is paid to the development and utilization of Dr. Edward Jenner's vaccination, chronicling the anti-vaccination movement, the evolving concept of compulsory vaccination and the global march toward eradication. Legal and moral challenges, the National Vaccine Institute, the treatment of American Indians and African Americans, immigrants, the often bloody quarantine battles, germ warfare, superstitions and home remedies are addressed from the historical perspectives of those who lived through and those who died of this scourge.
