{"id":2744,"date":"2005-03-29T18:47:33","date_gmt":"2005-03-29T23:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2015-05-17T08:15:48","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:15:48","slug":"influenza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2744","title":{"rendered":"The Influenza Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alongside of Middlemarch<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, I am also reading The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History<\/a>\"\"<\/i> (the story of the 1918 epidemic). It’s strange, how the two books are … dovetailing, quite by accident. I didn’t design it that way! Middlemarch<\/i> has, as one of its sub-plots, the controversies in the medical profession between new techniques and old received techniques … and this, as is probably not a surprise, is one of the main themes of the Influenza book.<\/p>\n

I’m only at the beginning of the Influenza book. (Ahem. I’ll say I’m only at the beginning. We’re still just discussing Hippocrates – so there’s a long way to go until World War I!) No, I’m teasing. It’s very interesting. A brief history of medical techniques, but more than that: medical philosophy, how diseases were viewed<\/i>, and how certain techniques were passed on from generation to generation without question.<\/p>\n

Good old Declaration-of-Independence-signer Dr. Benjamin Rush is mentioned quite a bit; also his “Let’s bleed everyone in sight!!” philosophy comes under some scrutiny. Heh. “Everyone should be bled. Whether they are sick or not!! The paler and weaker they get, the BETTER!”<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s interesting. Especially because so much of Lydgate’s conflict (at least so far in Middlemarch<\/i> is dealing with these older more establishment types who are resistant to change.)<\/p>\n

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