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Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations
Da millenni gli esseri umani e i virus coesistono e, suo malgrado, l'umanità più di una volta si è scoperta vulnerabile, stretta tra il terrore del contagio e l'ingegnosità della scienza.
Soffermandosi in particolare su avvenimenti del XVIII e XIX secolo, Schama focalizza la propria ricerca su un tema ancora oggi attuale, ossia il sospetto e i pregiudizi che da sempre hanno accompagnato tanto l'insorgere di inattese epidemie quanto le nuove scoperte scientifiche volte a scongiurarne gli effetti peggiori. Infatti, diverse malattie infettive dilagarono nelle affollate città il vaiolo colpì Londra, il colera infestò Parigi, la peste flagellò l'India. Il compito della nascente scienza medica? Fermare la mortalità.
Per raccontare quella frenetica battaglia per salvare quante più vite umane possibili, Schama presenta un'incredibile sequenza di personaggi e di storie. Tra queste, la triste parabola di un eroe quasi sconosciuto, Waldemar Haffkine. Scienziato ebreo di Odessa e microbiologo presso l'Istituto Pasteur, Haffkine sviluppò il primo vaccino contro il colera e, trasferitosi in India, fu pioniere di una serie di studi scientifici che contribuirono a immunizzare milioni di persone. Acclamato in Inghilterra come «salvatore dell'umanità», fu però vittima di un atto di scioccante ingiustizia che mise fine alla sua brillante carriera.
Nel ripercorrere la lunga storia della lotta tra l'uomo e i virus, Schama trova lo spunto per difendere la propria incrollabile certezza che esista un legame profondo e inscindibile che ci unisce alla natura e alla nostra specie. Alla fine, sostiene Schama, affrontiamo alcune sfide del nostro tempo insieme, come la lotta contro le infezioni pericolose. In quei momenti, «non ci sono estranei, ma solo amici un'unica preziosa catena di connessioni».
Attraversando i confini tra Oriente e Occidente, Schama conduce il lettore in un viaggio nel tempo che racconta molto del nostro presente, dimostrando come la lotta alle epidemie sia un compito non solo scientifico, ma anche politico, culturale e personale.
Soffermandosi in particolare su avvenimenti del XVIII e XIX secolo, Schama focalizza la propria ricerca su un tema ancora oggi attuale, ossia il sospetto e i pregiudizi che da sempre hanno accompagnato tanto l'insorgere di inattese epidemie quanto le nuove scoperte scientifiche volte a scongiurarne gli effetti peggiori. Infatti, diverse malattie infettive dilagarono nelle affollate città il vaiolo colpì Londra, il colera infestò Parigi, la peste flagellò l'India. Il compito della nascente scienza medica? Fermare la mortalità.
Per raccontare quella frenetica battaglia per salvare quante più vite umane possibili, Schama presenta un'incredibile sequenza di personaggi e di storie. Tra queste, la triste parabola di un eroe quasi sconosciuto, Waldemar Haffkine. Scienziato ebreo di Odessa e microbiologo presso l'Istituto Pasteur, Haffkine sviluppò il primo vaccino contro il colera e, trasferitosi in India, fu pioniere di una serie di studi scientifici che contribuirono a immunizzare milioni di persone. Acclamato in Inghilterra come «salvatore dell'umanità», fu però vittima di un atto di scioccante ingiustizia che mise fine alla sua brillante carriera.
Nel ripercorrere la lunga storia della lotta tra l'uomo e i virus, Schama trova lo spunto per difendere la propria incrollabile certezza che esista un legame profondo e inscindibile che ci unisce alla natura e alla nostra specie. Alla fine, sostiene Schama, affrontiamo alcune sfide del nostro tempo insieme, come la lotta contro le infezioni pericolose. In quei momenti, «non ci sono estranei, ma solo amici un'unica preziosa catena di connessioni».
Attraversando i confini tra Oriente e Occidente, Schama conduce il lettore in un viaggio nel tempo che racconta molto del nostro presente, dimostrando come la lotta alle epidemie sia un compito non solo scientifico, ma anche politico, culturale e personale.
320 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2023
About the author
Simon Schama
76 books940 followersSir Simon Michael Schama is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000—2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of the Jews (2013).
Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000—2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of the Jews (2013).
Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
August 2, 2023
This is a difficult one to rate. On one hand, the research and language are top-notch, and the story Simon Schama had chosen to tell is extremely interesting. At the same time the book, from its title and synopsis, promises something other (a more or less comprehensive look at pandemics in history and the development of vaccination) than what is eventually given. Instead, the author focuses on several little-known personalities from the medical fields of the 19th/ early 20th century, who saved an incomprehensible number of lives through their discoveries and application of science - yet the world did not thank them.
Schama has a talent for telling stories, but more often than not he elaborately explains what could be a footnote, which can be irritating at times.
Simply put, there is a great deal to learn from this book, but it is not necessarily the exact lesson that you wanted.
Schama has a talent for telling stories, but more often than not he elaborately explains what could be a footnote, which can be irritating at times.
Simply put, there is a great deal to learn from this book, but it is not necessarily the exact lesson that you wanted.
October 7, 2023
This book suffered from a truly astonishing, mind-blowing, chronic inability to stay the f*ck on topic. As a global health nerd who wants to read any and all things about international systems and disease, I was super stoked about this book and pre-ordered it when I heard about it. Boy, was I disappointed.
This book is long, clogged with information, and meandering. Up front I'll say that the sections on smallpox bored me, though that's not really the author's fault: I'd already read an entire book on Mary Wortley Montagu and smallpox inoculation throughout history - that's not really on Schama, but at the same time he contributed absolutely nothing new to the conversation. He just summarized facts that are already known, which is interesting if you've never heard them, but not useful if you're writing a new book in a field for subject matter experts.
Moving on to the other sections: cholera, tuberculosis, plague, etc. These topics were focused on various countries under British rule and examined colonialism and little-known medical figures such as Proust, Haffkein, Voltaire, etc. All of this was interesting - but again, Schama is not an expert in the medical/public health field, and this is made painfully obvious when he detours into what he is an expert in: the plight of Jewish people in the 19th century, certain parts of history, art history, French history. He gets so into the weeds on little background details that if you picked up this book to learn about "Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations," you'll be left confused, frustrated, and - if you're like me - irritated.
The chapters are long, difficult to follow thanks to the constant diversions, and never present a cohesive thesis. The title of this book implies heavily that Schama is going to make a linear or at least tangential argument (using case studies) that explore how global health is affected by the onset of pandemics, and the approach to vaccination in response to such. Instead it is just a hodgepodge of diverting facts, blog-like explanations of niche topics, and rumination on the experience of outbreaks within the borders of specific nations. It's frustrating because Schama makes such good points about exploitation, the colonization of medicine and treatment, and the dichotomous nature of medical care when it comes to class, but he constantly fails to bring anything together in a thesis that ties the book up neatly.
By the end of it, he's talking about Fauci, Fox News, and horseshoe crabs, mulling over the state of the world today while only thinly drawing it back to the topics he'd droned on and on about chapters before.
I was severely (obviously) disappointed in this book. It took me ages to drag myself through, and I would not recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who has no background in global health security or public health. At the conclusion of it, I've decided Schama just threw darts at a board to pick the title of this book, and the dartboard was just full of words that had been viral (no pun intended) in the news lately. Then he rambled on about every single thought he'd ever had regarding disease and society while in lockdown, and it never occurred to him that his thoughts belonged on a blog, not in a book.
Though narrowly focused, "Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds" is a better read on literally every buzzword in this book's title - pandemics, vaccinations, and the health of nations.
This book is long, clogged with information, and meandering. Up front I'll say that the sections on smallpox bored me, though that's not really the author's fault: I'd already read an entire book on Mary Wortley Montagu and smallpox inoculation throughout history - that's not really on Schama, but at the same time he contributed absolutely nothing new to the conversation. He just summarized facts that are already known, which is interesting if you've never heard them, but not useful if you're writing a new book in a field for subject matter experts.
Moving on to the other sections: cholera, tuberculosis, plague, etc. These topics were focused on various countries under British rule and examined colonialism and little-known medical figures such as Proust, Haffkein, Voltaire, etc. All of this was interesting - but again, Schama is not an expert in the medical/public health field, and this is made painfully obvious when he detours into what he is an expert in: the plight of Jewish people in the 19th century, certain parts of history, art history, French history. He gets so into the weeds on little background details that if you picked up this book to learn about "Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations," you'll be left confused, frustrated, and - if you're like me - irritated.
The chapters are long, difficult to follow thanks to the constant diversions, and never present a cohesive thesis. The title of this book implies heavily that Schama is going to make a linear or at least tangential argument (using case studies) that explore how global health is affected by the onset of pandemics, and the approach to vaccination in response to such. Instead it is just a hodgepodge of diverting facts, blog-like explanations of niche topics, and rumination on the experience of outbreaks within the borders of specific nations. It's frustrating because Schama makes such good points about exploitation, the colonization of medicine and treatment, and the dichotomous nature of medical care when it comes to class, but he constantly fails to bring anything together in a thesis that ties the book up neatly.
By the end of it, he's talking about Fauci, Fox News, and horseshoe crabs, mulling over the state of the world today while only thinly drawing it back to the topics he'd droned on and on about chapters before.
I was severely (obviously) disappointed in this book. It took me ages to drag myself through, and I would not recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who has no background in global health security or public health. At the conclusion of it, I've decided Schama just threw darts at a board to pick the title of this book, and the dartboard was just full of words that had been viral (no pun intended) in the news lately. Then he rambled on about every single thought he'd ever had regarding disease and society while in lockdown, and it never occurred to him that his thoughts belonged on a blog, not in a book.
Though narrowly focused, "Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds" is a better read on literally every buzzword in this book's title - pandemics, vaccinations, and the health of nations.
July 29, 2023
This is an engrossing survey of the fight against disease . Alongside the names we know such as Jenner , Pasteur and Lister are just as many we don’t. The book begins with a fascinating look at smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century - we made a botched start before safe techniques were learned from Turkey before moving to Adrian Proust’s ( father of novelist Marcel) attempts to build international data sharing to combat cholera.
A large portion of the book is given to the Jewish scientist Valdemar Haffkine who pioneered vaccination in countries as far afield as India . He would be blamed when a dodgy serum batch killed petiole and his reputation almost shattered despite proof the fault was much later in the chain than the source - among his champions was Robert Ross, instrumental in fighting malaria . As the book closes the fight against TB comes into play.
As always Schama is stronger on unknown human stories than cogent chronology but this is still fascinating and tells some neglected stories . In the books portrayal of the politics of vaccination ( the way for instances early tories rejected inoculation as new and worse foreign ) there are shades of nationalistic responses to Covid . Along the way is progress though - intermeshed here is the fight for women to be taken seriously as medics which British and Indian women put nationality aside to fight for together .
A large portion of the book is given to the Jewish scientist Valdemar Haffkine who pioneered vaccination in countries as far afield as India . He would be blamed when a dodgy serum batch killed petiole and his reputation almost shattered despite proof the fault was much later in the chain than the source - among his champions was Robert Ross, instrumental in fighting malaria . As the book closes the fight against TB comes into play.
As always Schama is stronger on unknown human stories than cogent chronology but this is still fascinating and tells some neglected stories . In the books portrayal of the politics of vaccination ( the way for instances early tories rejected inoculation as new and worse foreign ) there are shades of nationalistic responses to Covid . Along the way is progress though - intermeshed here is the fight for women to be taken seriously as medics which British and Indian women put nationality aside to fight for together .
July 5, 2023
I really really struggled with this, after starting with high hopes. Incredibly detailed, but in a way that seems meandering and way off topic, I found it overly long and indigestible. Did not finish - a rarity for me.
Shelved as 'dnf'
June 27, 2023DNF. The content is really interesting, but the writing style and organization makes it really difficult to read. The chapters are really long and feel endless, and the covid information from the first chapter will be outdated soon. Just not the book for me.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
December 10, 2023
... in our present historical extremity, there are no foreigners, only familiars: a single precious chain of connection that we snap at our utmost peril.
Foreign Bodies looks at the present (and future) of global pandemics by looking at the past.
Traceable centuries back to various historical inoculation practices, vaccination might well claim to be among the oldest of the mainstays of modern medicine, older than the understanding of the microscopic that underpins it. It comes as a dark jolt of bitterest camaraderie with the past to see echoes of the same shadow plays that we all witnessed since early 2020 stretch in 18th century New England and 1890s Calcutta.
History may not repeat, but it rhymes: thus, then, too in the interconnected global economy that creates prosperity and packs humans and animals in the same narrow quarters alike; in the hiccuping gait of international collaboration; and the obstinacy of institutions to admit their modes of operation and control insufficient; in the reflexive fear from the infringement of the foreign needle and the foreigner and the microbe, oft rhetorically made up to be one and the same. (Listen up for mentions of vermin and viruses, of parasites and plague rats, and of hygienist metaphors for the clearing of society.)
Perhaps it is chagrin at the realisation that the best-laid plans of mice and monsters are vanity projects compared to the entropy of the habitable planet, or the eruption of pandemics, that makes for reluctance to describe those existential crises in anything but the stale vocabulary of politics and military history. Diseases are invaders; measures to deal with them are plots; bacteriologists and epidemiologists are an alien elite, the microbe and the scientist in cahoots against homespun wisdom. The health of the world contracts into the health of nations, even when the latter cannot be sustained without ensuring the former.
[...] What follows are scenes from this late-period episode of the human comedy. And like much comedy, the could not be more serious.
Above all, Simon Schama's narrative history shows tight, passionate, intimate prose and a delicately honed senses for the human stories to follow through history; like Proust, père, who in many ways embodied the nascent networking and activism of an borders-unheeding scientific community.
But, above all, fittingly, Foreign Bodies's main protagonist was a foreign body himself. A Jew born in cosmopolitan Odessa, repeatedly censured and arrested as a suspect revolutionary element of the ever-so-bothersomely-defiant-intelligentsia by the watchful eye of Tsarist paranoia, a bright pupil of the original Institut Pasteur, he'd do the greatest of his bacteriological work in British-ruled India (where he'd be repeatedly hamstrung and much censured as suspect element of Tsarist intelligence) vaccinating against cholera first and heading the world's first mass production of vaccines at the turn of the century in the wake of the plague epidemic that erupted in Bombay in 1896. His downfall was to be the contaminated stopper of a single among thousands vials of vaccine and a score of people dying - a flaw that'd be blamed on Haffkine's supposedly reckless process of production, evidence of on-field mishandling coming to be accepted long after irreparable damage had been done to both its work and its maker.
Read
April 20, 2024DNF. Either over my head or gibberish.
For example, the book ends with a bafflingly long tangent about horseshoe crabs. I guess maybe this is sorta making some kind of One Health argument, but I couldn't tell from the final chapter what the salient point of the book was.
There's a mention of original cow pox "vaccination" to prevent small pox, and Schama seems to say this was well-received at the time because it came from cute cows, but this is nutty because the Anti-Vaccination movement of course goes back to the early smallpox vaccine, and part of the opposition was specifically about how it came from cows.
He delves into the political brouhaha over Anthony Fauci, but gets basic facts of the matter wrong, such as repeatedly calling Fauci "an epidemiologist." This makes me doubt his qualifications for talking about this topic, even as he mocks others for not being experts. For some reason, he dives deep into the side show about gain of function research and makes bizarre statements about how such research is needed so scientists can "see around the corner" to help prevent pandemics. To back up this assessment, he mentions all kinds of unrelated things like plant fertilizer and Pasteur's rabies vaccine. He did not present convincing evidence that engineering killer viruses has prevented pandemics. As far as I could tell, the gist of the argument was "SCIENCE!" But just trusting famous scientists unskeptically is the opposite of a scientific attitude.
Alternatively:
Pandora's Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, And A World At Risk
Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth
Plagues and Peoples
Rats, Lice, and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues
Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present
For example, the book ends with a bafflingly long tangent about horseshoe crabs. I guess maybe this is sorta making some kind of One Health argument, but I couldn't tell from the final chapter what the salient point of the book was.
There's a mention of original cow pox "vaccination" to prevent small pox, and Schama seems to say this was well-received at the time because it came from cute cows, but this is nutty because the Anti-Vaccination movement of course goes back to the early smallpox vaccine, and part of the opposition was specifically about how it came from cows.
He delves into the political brouhaha over Anthony Fauci, but gets basic facts of the matter wrong, such as repeatedly calling Fauci "an epidemiologist." This makes me doubt his qualifications for talking about this topic, even as he mocks others for not being experts. For some reason, he dives deep into the side show about gain of function research and makes bizarre statements about how such research is needed so scientists can "see around the corner" to help prevent pandemics. To back up this assessment, he mentions all kinds of unrelated things like plant fertilizer and Pasteur's rabies vaccine. He did not present convincing evidence that engineering killer viruses has prevented pandemics. As far as I could tell, the gist of the argument was "SCIENCE!" But just trusting famous scientists unskeptically is the opposite of a scientific attitude.
Alternatively:
Pandora's Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, And A World At Risk
Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth
Plagues and Peoples
Rats, Lice, and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues
Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present
November 22, 2023
An expanded review to follow.
On of the top social and cultural historians of Europe has written a history of efforts to develop, test, and propagate vaccines and public health programs for the major epidemics that terrified people in the past but which have largely disappeared in the west today. This is especially noteworthy in outlining the political and social difficulties that emerged and threatened prior vaccine initiatives. Those who followed these issues with COVID-19 will feel right at home. This is a terrific and wise book that is well worth reading.
On of the top social and cultural historians of Europe has written a history of efforts to develop, test, and propagate vaccines and public health programs for the major epidemics that terrified people in the past but which have largely disappeared in the west today. This is especially noteworthy in outlining the political and social difficulties that emerged and threatened prior vaccine initiatives. Those who followed these issues with COVID-19 will feel right at home. This is a terrific and wise book that is well worth reading.
April 19, 2024
Pretty neat book. Haffkine is such a curious, compelling character and was stunned by how central India was to the vaccine innovation. The Voltaire and Smallpox story and Adrien Proust’s work (!!) were fun reads as well.
Time to read Lady Doctors…
Time to read Lady Doctors…
February 21, 2024
3.5/5
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations is a generally good book marred by a few incidents of absolutely deranged framing. I liked a lot about it, but it lacks focus. While it is an in depth look at an interesting subject for a popular audience, it doesn’t always hold up on an academic level. Ultimately, for me it worked better as a companion read to Seth Dickinson’s The Masquerade, which also deals with colonial medicine and hygiene, but in a fictional setting. Foreign Bodies covers a lot but it doesn’t stand up on its own.
The elephant in the room was, for me, that Simon Schama is an art historian, not a historian of science or medicine, and you can tell.
Or, well, I could tell, because I am a historian of science; I have two very expensive degrees about it. That’s why I have so much to say about the minor things that are wrong with this book.
First, the good. Foreign Bodies is a fun and eclectic look at the unfortunately not widely popularized niche of medical history: colonial medicine. I would actually highly recommend it as an anti-colonial read to flesh out one’s understanding of British occupation of India and China. The exploration of the racialized and colonial politics of hygiene and cleanliness — and how the principles of sanitation formed a cornerstone of the ideology of empire — is perhaps this book’s best contribution. As I mentioned above, I read this book directly after The Masquerade series. The series uses a fictional setting to explore the ethics of resistance to colonization. The most complete resistance to colonization includes refusing to adopt colonial practises of sanitation and medicine which do save lives. Is this a necessary sacrifice? Medicine is the poisoned fruit of empire; access to it is used to as both carrot and stick to ensure colonial obedience. The Masquerade is very thoroughly researched and incorporates a dizzying array of historical influences, and Foreign Bodies serves as an exploration of many of them. It contextualizes the fictional constructions in our real history.
I also, personally, loved the verbose literary style. This book is way way more complicated than it needs to be, but I found it fun and funny. My favourite example was the use of ‘conurbation;, rather than ‘city’ or even ‘metropolis’. What the fuck. If you prefer clarity and directness, you might not enjoy wading through this book’s extremely languorous prose, but for me it had a certain academia-camp charm. And I can appreciate the compulsion to explain and clarify that leads to long-windedness like this. I feel #seen.
What I appreciated less were the weird quirks of framing. Foreign Bodies is pretty aggressively anti-colonial. I’ve read a lot of books where the author is reluctant to explicitly ascribe responsibility for the cruel and unusual behaviours of colonial regimes — all of which were ultimately perpetrated by individual human beings — and this is not one of them. But it exclusively uses the 19th century European terms to refer to Asian locations. That was the detail that tipped me off that this was Schama’s first foray into the field. Unless the context is extremely specific to the 19th century geography or regime, I’m used to seeing Myanmar, not Burma. The 19th century names are technically not incorrect, it’s just not the sort of thing I’d expect to see in an academic work.
The other thing I wouldn’t expect to see, and to my mind the far more egregious error, is the continuous framing of inoculation as new and scientific while previous regimes of sanitization were superstitious and religious. Actual historians of science simply do not think like this.
I think it’s absolutely accurate to say that the Europeans, and especially the British, approached protocols of carbolic sanitization with a fanatical zeal, but to suggest that this was the religion of carbolic to the science of inoculation is misguided and ultimately distracts from the book’s more interesting questions. First, let’s quickly dispense with the idea that science and religion are two opposite poles of knowledge, as diametrically opposed as black and white. It’s especially out of place in a book that is otherwise attempting empathy towards non-western traditions of medicine, culture, and belief. Science is just another belief system grounded on very specific verification procedures (as opposed to faith, or criticism of certain texts, etc). The sooner we understand that science is a system of belief rather than a privileged access to The Truth, the better we will be at handling the times that science is wrong.
Because science is wrong all the time. Our understanding of our reality is is constantly changing as we refine pre-existing theories and discover new ones. Carbolic was exactly such a case. Fifty years previous, sanitization was the scientific doctrine bravely fighting the superstition of doctor’s honour and the religion of laudable pus.
I found it especially deranged that Schama framed inoculation as part of the vanguard science of bacteriology in opposition to sterilization. Sterilization is grounded in bacteriology just as much as inoculation, if not more (the evidence for the effectiveness of inoculation was exclusively statistical in this period, not microbial). Disease is caused by germs. To treat the disease, use carbolic to kill the germs. The germ are invisible and everywhere, so carbolic your shrivelled British heart out. This is mixed, of coursed, with the colonizers’ fundamental lack of respect for the personhood of the colonized, and you get the so-called religion of carbolic. It’s just out-dated science strained through a conservative and slow to adapt colonial bureaucracy.
This framing of inoculation and sanitization as two opposite poles of scientificness obfuscates the fact that inoculation was was just as much a part of western science, the western culture and technologies that were steam-rolling their way over Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems. Does it make it better than this fruit of empire fulfils its promise? Schama isn’t interested in asking, and treats inoculation as unambiguously good, free from the colonial baggage of the rest of medicine. I get that the exploration of this question would be limited by the extreme paucity of non-European sources, but the execution here was still disappointing.
Ultimately, while Foreign Bodies is informative and interesting, it works best as a companion read because it doesn’t really come together by itself. It addresses the obvious, but fails to move any deeper. I have a distinct memory of being struck by the realization, a third of the way through the book, that I didn’t know what it was actually about. Schama draws a connection between viruses and bacteria as foreign bodies causing disease (this is the detail that separates germ theory from humoural theory), to suspicion of inoculation being grounded in fear of injection with foreign bodies, to key figures in the history of inoculation as foreign bodies both within the Asian countries where they worked and within the Western European empires that employed them. It’s a tantalizing idea, but Schama never explains what this connection is (beyond a literary image) or what it might mean. There is meat on that bone. What is the meaning of native and foreign in medicine? How does it interact with our ideas of sanitariness and cleanliness? How can we use this information to decolonize medicine and hygiene in the future? Foreign Bodies pivots so hard from wrapping up its many historical tangents to bemoaning COVID vaccine denialism that it never has time to address them. (This is putting it charitably; put uncharitably, one might suspect that this sort of thing never occurred to Schama at all).
I think the book is an admirable effort for a non-historian of science. It hits the mark way more than it misses. I just did find myself wishing that it had a little more of an understanding of the history and philosophy of science as a field. We’ve been over this sort of thing, but if that work never gets picked up but outsiders, we’ll keep spinning in circles.
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations is a generally good book marred by a few incidents of absolutely deranged framing. I liked a lot about it, but it lacks focus. While it is an in depth look at an interesting subject for a popular audience, it doesn’t always hold up on an academic level. Ultimately, for me it worked better as a companion read to Seth Dickinson’s The Masquerade, which also deals with colonial medicine and hygiene, but in a fictional setting. Foreign Bodies covers a lot but it doesn’t stand up on its own.
The elephant in the room was, for me, that Simon Schama is an art historian, not a historian of science or medicine, and you can tell.
Or, well, I could tell, because I am a historian of science; I have two very expensive degrees about it. That’s why I have so much to say about the minor things that are wrong with this book.
First, the good. Foreign Bodies is a fun and eclectic look at the unfortunately not widely popularized niche of medical history: colonial medicine. I would actually highly recommend it as an anti-colonial read to flesh out one’s understanding of British occupation of India and China. The exploration of the racialized and colonial politics of hygiene and cleanliness — and how the principles of sanitation formed a cornerstone of the ideology of empire — is perhaps this book’s best contribution. As I mentioned above, I read this book directly after The Masquerade series. The series uses a fictional setting to explore the ethics of resistance to colonization. The most complete resistance to colonization includes refusing to adopt colonial practises of sanitation and medicine which do save lives. Is this a necessary sacrifice? Medicine is the poisoned fruit of empire; access to it is used to as both carrot and stick to ensure colonial obedience. The Masquerade is very thoroughly researched and incorporates a dizzying array of historical influences, and Foreign Bodies serves as an exploration of many of them. It contextualizes the fictional constructions in our real history.
I also, personally, loved the verbose literary style. This book is way way more complicated than it needs to be, but I found it fun and funny. My favourite example was the use of ‘conurbation;, rather than ‘city’ or even ‘metropolis’. What the fuck. If you prefer clarity and directness, you might not enjoy wading through this book’s extremely languorous prose, but for me it had a certain academia-camp charm. And I can appreciate the compulsion to explain and clarify that leads to long-windedness like this. I feel #seen.
What I appreciated less were the weird quirks of framing. Foreign Bodies is pretty aggressively anti-colonial. I’ve read a lot of books where the author is reluctant to explicitly ascribe responsibility for the cruel and unusual behaviours of colonial regimes — all of which were ultimately perpetrated by individual human beings — and this is not one of them. But it exclusively uses the 19th century European terms to refer to Asian locations. That was the detail that tipped me off that this was Schama’s first foray into the field. Unless the context is extremely specific to the 19th century geography or regime, I’m used to seeing Myanmar, not Burma. The 19th century names are technically not incorrect, it’s just not the sort of thing I’d expect to see in an academic work.
The other thing I wouldn’t expect to see, and to my mind the far more egregious error, is the continuous framing of inoculation as new and scientific while previous regimes of sanitization were superstitious and religious. Actual historians of science simply do not think like this.
I think it’s absolutely accurate to say that the Europeans, and especially the British, approached protocols of carbolic sanitization with a fanatical zeal, but to suggest that this was the religion of carbolic to the science of inoculation is misguided and ultimately distracts from the book’s more interesting questions. First, let’s quickly dispense with the idea that science and religion are two opposite poles of knowledge, as diametrically opposed as black and white. It’s especially out of place in a book that is otherwise attempting empathy towards non-western traditions of medicine, culture, and belief. Science is just another belief system grounded on very specific verification procedures (as opposed to faith, or criticism of certain texts, etc). The sooner we understand that science is a system of belief rather than a privileged access to The Truth, the better we will be at handling the times that science is wrong.
Because science is wrong all the time. Our understanding of our reality is is constantly changing as we refine pre-existing theories and discover new ones. Carbolic was exactly such a case. Fifty years previous, sanitization was the scientific doctrine bravely fighting the superstition of doctor’s honour and the religion of laudable pus.
I found it especially deranged that Schama framed inoculation as part of the vanguard science of bacteriology in opposition to sterilization. Sterilization is grounded in bacteriology just as much as inoculation, if not more (the evidence for the effectiveness of inoculation was exclusively statistical in this period, not microbial). Disease is caused by germs. To treat the disease, use carbolic to kill the germs. The germ are invisible and everywhere, so carbolic your shrivelled British heart out. This is mixed, of coursed, with the colonizers’ fundamental lack of respect for the personhood of the colonized, and you get the so-called religion of carbolic. It’s just out-dated science strained through a conservative and slow to adapt colonial bureaucracy.
This framing of inoculation and sanitization as two opposite poles of scientificness obfuscates the fact that inoculation was was just as much a part of western science, the western culture and technologies that were steam-rolling their way over Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems. Does it make it better than this fruit of empire fulfils its promise? Schama isn’t interested in asking, and treats inoculation as unambiguously good, free from the colonial baggage of the rest of medicine. I get that the exploration of this question would be limited by the extreme paucity of non-European sources, but the execution here was still disappointing.
Ultimately, while Foreign Bodies is informative and interesting, it works best as a companion read because it doesn’t really come together by itself. It addresses the obvious, but fails to move any deeper. I have a distinct memory of being struck by the realization, a third of the way through the book, that I didn’t know what it was actually about. Schama draws a connection between viruses and bacteria as foreign bodies causing disease (this is the detail that separates germ theory from humoural theory), to suspicion of inoculation being grounded in fear of injection with foreign bodies, to key figures in the history of inoculation as foreign bodies both within the Asian countries where they worked and within the Western European empires that employed them. It’s a tantalizing idea, but Schama never explains what this connection is (beyond a literary image) or what it might mean. There is meat on that bone. What is the meaning of native and foreign in medicine? How does it interact with our ideas of sanitariness and cleanliness? How can we use this information to decolonize medicine and hygiene in the future? Foreign Bodies pivots so hard from wrapping up its many historical tangents to bemoaning COVID vaccine denialism that it never has time to address them. (This is putting it charitably; put uncharitably, one might suspect that this sort of thing never occurred to Schama at all).
I think the book is an admirable effort for a non-historian of science. It hits the mark way more than it misses. I just did find myself wishing that it had a little more of an understanding of the history and philosophy of science as a field. We’ve been over this sort of thing, but if that work never gets picked up but outsiders, we’ll keep spinning in circles.
June 19, 2023
This is a well-documented & detailed review of pandemics & vaccinations in the 19th-21st centuries, emphasizing the frequent conflict between devoted scientists, physicians & public health advocates who,on the basis of evidence, promoted the importance of vaccination, saving millions of lives in India & more widely, vs. the British & Indian Medical Service politicians & establishment who were mired in the outmoded & frequently useless measures of isolation & sanitization in diseases where they played little or no part, & often blocked the efforts of the former. There is an interesting section applying to a similar situation in the US with regard to the current Covid epidemic. Though full of interesting or fascinating anecdotes & frequent referral to antisemitism & zionism in Eastern Europe, I found the writing style ponderous, with frequent lengthy sentences with many subclauses & the introduction of a vast cast of characters, which made the reading laborious. Still worth the read.
November 27, 2023
Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama
This book, written during the COVID time, is a bit of a mish mash; in a preliminary chapter it raises these big current issues, which were underscored by the emergence of COVID (A. B. and C.; think particularly the ‘wet markets’ of Wuhan, where COVID was first recognized/spread…Despite the mish-mashness, it is such a superb historical document and so timely, that it needs to be awarded at least 4 stars,for how it gives a historic background for these major issues that relate to the emergence of COVID and the difficult time we have had in controlling it.
A. Suburbanization, interaction between animals and people; loss of rain forests
B. Drumbeat of national tribalism vs bugle call of global peril
C. Cult of individualism vs urgencies of common interest
Schama subsequently takes us on an historic tour that addresses the slow adoption of measures to could offer hope of limiting mortality/morbidity from the major pandemic diseases: smallpox, in the 18th century, and then, cholera and plague in the 19th and into the 20th century.
There are heroes: Voltaire visa vis variolization against smallpox, Proust’s father Adrian Proust visa vis the adoption opf quaantine measures to control cholera, and most especially Mordechai Haffkine, who was a vaccinologist (mostly not recognized) par excellence, particularly as it relaes to plague
Shama covers in early chapters the history of Smallpox control measures (known already in imperial China in the 15th century as documented in the Women of Lady Tan’s Court) variolization and Voltaire’s smallpox in 1723; abatement of smallpox mortality an exigency of maintaining dynastic continuity
(Ottoman lands (and Chinese) were already doing this.)
Scham goes next onto Adrian Prost’s recognition of how cholera spreads via vibrio, and recognition of need for international regulation at 11th international sanitation congress in Paris, 1903, (where he died following stroke).
Sanitation (Broad St pump) measures vs immunization Travel such as Haj and British commerce each helped spread Cholera in 19th century. Opening of Suez canal helped spread cholera and plague. Quarantine opposed by British for fear of impact on their commerce with India
Vaccines against plague and cholera developed at Pasteur institute by Waldemar Haffkine, originally from Odessa…and possibly connected to Narodnaya Volya and Alexander Ii’s assassination .
He took the plague vaccine he developed himself in 1892
Metchnikoff, a sponsor for Haffkine..started in Kharkov; ontogenetic recapitulation of phylogeny recognized
Koch identified Comma bacillus of Cholera in Port Said
Pasteur scientists included Roux, Yersin, …
Franco Russian alliance in 1894 but no place for Haffkine due to his association with Narodnaya Volya..
British and French pretensions that imperialism led to improved health for the subjects in the Raj…
Haffkine in Calcutta 1893-4, with opposition at times to vaccine despite its efficacy, especially amongst Muslim and the military and medical establishment of the Raj.
Part 3: about power and pesticides…
The blindness and narrowness of the
British Colonial Office, the India Office
the (French) Quai d’Orsay
Queen Victoria’s munshee: her intimate Indian servant/secretary
served her last 14 years and some said Victoria with her openness towards having an Indian personal servant couldn’t be an imperialistic villain…
But the very means used to bind the parts of the empires more closely… became the flowing conduits of disease and death…poet writes
Rats die the east and a few days later people die like city walls…
and soon thereafter dies himself of plague
British opposition to quarantine due to lack of belief in its efficacy and concerns of economic disastrous impact
But business had an unexpected partner- sickness
Founder of London School of Tropical Medicine, Patrick Manson, worked in China IMCS for 18 years prior
These various bacteriologists in 1890’s working for their government’s imperialism agenda…but Yersin may have been revered by Vietnamese.
“British India, at its most idealized: orderly responsible, benevolently custodial, a just and conscientious government, on which the sun would hardly dare to set”
Bubonic plague in Bombay triggered the beginning of the end of the Raj in 1897…the forces to destroy it both born in the epidemic:
social and religious outrage and mass strikes and demonstrations…
A vaccine would be better than brutal interventionist measures
Half of Bombay’s population of 850,000 had fled
Haffkine works out a vaccine bur there is much anti vax-ism
And Haffkine, the Russian scientist is regarded by much of the establishment as a foreign body…despite his accomplishments
Perhaps an English Dryfuss…
Disinfection, segregation, and quarantine vs vaccinations a great vaccine race amongst scientists of the great powers
The war against infection mutated into a culture war in which militant nationalism struck a first, bloody blow
And then, in 1902, the Malkowal tetanus complications: 19 cases! blamed on Haffkine..
Ross, whose photo album illustrates the Indian plague epidemic in this book , also discovered the life cycle of malaria in anopholes (and was not supported by IMS).. quite like Haffkine’s problem..
But he is first British Nobelist in 1902..
They have a common enemy: institutional barbarism
Never gets back to research in India; in 1925, at age 66, to the abortive Joint supported Bolshevik Jewish Crimea project! Yevrey na zemlye! Lasted til 1927…
Represents Alliance Israelite Universelle
Winding down:
Final riffs on COVID and Fox news Rand Paul Fauci bashers and on Horseshoe Crab and big pharma’s impact on it.
The demises of the various vaccinators profiled, generally with little glory.
And finally the institute in india , named after Haffkine, produces millions of doses of COVID vaccine, but not without issues that arise…..
This book, written during the COVID time, is a bit of a mish mash; in a preliminary chapter it raises these big current issues, which were underscored by the emergence of COVID (A. B. and C.; think particularly the ‘wet markets’ of Wuhan, where COVID was first recognized/spread…Despite the mish-mashness, it is such a superb historical document and so timely, that it needs to be awarded at least 4 stars,for how it gives a historic background for these major issues that relate to the emergence of COVID and the difficult time we have had in controlling it.
A. Suburbanization, interaction between animals and people; loss of rain forests
B. Drumbeat of national tribalism vs bugle call of global peril
C. Cult of individualism vs urgencies of common interest
Schama subsequently takes us on an historic tour that addresses the slow adoption of measures to could offer hope of limiting mortality/morbidity from the major pandemic diseases: smallpox, in the 18th century, and then, cholera and plague in the 19th and into the 20th century.
There are heroes: Voltaire visa vis variolization against smallpox, Proust’s father Adrian Proust visa vis the adoption opf quaantine measures to control cholera, and most especially Mordechai Haffkine, who was a vaccinologist (mostly not recognized) par excellence, particularly as it relaes to plague
Shama covers in early chapters the history of Smallpox control measures (known already in imperial China in the 15th century as documented in the Women of Lady Tan’s Court) variolization and Voltaire’s smallpox in 1723; abatement of smallpox mortality an exigency of maintaining dynastic continuity
(Ottoman lands (and Chinese) were already doing this.)
Scham goes next onto Adrian Prost’s recognition of how cholera spreads via vibrio, and recognition of need for international regulation at 11th international sanitation congress in Paris, 1903, (where he died following stroke).
Sanitation (Broad St pump) measures vs immunization Travel such as Haj and British commerce each helped spread Cholera in 19th century. Opening of Suez canal helped spread cholera and plague. Quarantine opposed by British for fear of impact on their commerce with India
Vaccines against plague and cholera developed at Pasteur institute by Waldemar Haffkine, originally from Odessa…and possibly connected to Narodnaya Volya and Alexander Ii’s assassination .
He took the plague vaccine he developed himself in 1892
Metchnikoff, a sponsor for Haffkine..started in Kharkov; ontogenetic recapitulation of phylogeny recognized
Koch identified Comma bacillus of Cholera in Port Said
Pasteur scientists included Roux, Yersin, …
Franco Russian alliance in 1894 but no place for Haffkine due to his association with Narodnaya Volya..
British and French pretensions that imperialism led to improved health for the subjects in the Raj…
Haffkine in Calcutta 1893-4, with opposition at times to vaccine despite its efficacy, especially amongst Muslim and the military and medical establishment of the Raj.
Part 3: about power and pesticides…
The blindness and narrowness of the
British Colonial Office, the India Office
the (French) Quai d’Orsay
Queen Victoria’s munshee: her intimate Indian servant/secretary
served her last 14 years and some said Victoria with her openness towards having an Indian personal servant couldn’t be an imperialistic villain…
But the very means used to bind the parts of the empires more closely… became the flowing conduits of disease and death…poet writes
Rats die the east and a few days later people die like city walls…
and soon thereafter dies himself of plague
British opposition to quarantine due to lack of belief in its efficacy and concerns of economic disastrous impact
But business had an unexpected partner- sickness
Founder of London School of Tropical Medicine, Patrick Manson, worked in China IMCS for 18 years prior
These various bacteriologists in 1890’s working for their government’s imperialism agenda…but Yersin may have been revered by Vietnamese.
“British India, at its most idealized: orderly responsible, benevolently custodial, a just and conscientious government, on which the sun would hardly dare to set”
Bubonic plague in Bombay triggered the beginning of the end of the Raj in 1897…the forces to destroy it both born in the epidemic:
social and religious outrage and mass strikes and demonstrations…
A vaccine would be better than brutal interventionist measures
Half of Bombay’s population of 850,000 had fled
Haffkine works out a vaccine bur there is much anti vax-ism
And Haffkine, the Russian scientist is regarded by much of the establishment as a foreign body…despite his accomplishments
Perhaps an English Dryfuss…
Disinfection, segregation, and quarantine vs vaccinations a great vaccine race amongst scientists of the great powers
The war against infection mutated into a culture war in which militant nationalism struck a first, bloody blow
And then, in 1902, the Malkowal tetanus complications: 19 cases! blamed on Haffkine..
Ross, whose photo album illustrates the Indian plague epidemic in this book , also discovered the life cycle of malaria in anopholes (and was not supported by IMS).. quite like Haffkine’s problem..
But he is first British Nobelist in 1902..
They have a common enemy: institutional barbarism
Never gets back to research in India; in 1925, at age 66, to the abortive Joint supported Bolshevik Jewish Crimea project! Yevrey na zemlye! Lasted til 1927…
Represents Alliance Israelite Universelle
Winding down:
Final riffs on COVID and Fox news Rand Paul Fauci bashers and on Horseshoe Crab and big pharma’s impact on it.
The demises of the various vaccinators profiled, generally with little glory.
And finally the institute in india , named after Haffkine, produces millions of doses of COVID vaccine, but not without issues that arise…..
August 12, 2023
Ranging across centuries, and countries, here are the stories of the scientific developments that ensured very few of us grew up dreading smallpox, cholera, plague or other deadly epidemic diseases that killed millions. The quest continues of course: malaria is particularly deadly still and a vaccine maybe imminent.
I bogged down a little in the details of biography of scientists I have heard of (Pasteur, Yersin etc)and ones new to me especially Haffkine, who saved thousands, maybe millions from cholera and plague. If, like me you find this slow reading, you will understand when Schama pulls it together in our struggles against the most recent pandemic, Covid.
An excellent book.
I bogged down a little in the details of biography of scientists I have heard of (Pasteur, Yersin etc)and ones new to me especially Haffkine, who saved thousands, maybe millions from cholera and plague. If, like me you find this slow reading, you will understand when Schama pulls it together in our struggles against the most recent pandemic, Covid.
An excellent book.
May 1, 2024
We are all familiar with the appalling anti-vax movement that gained so much traction during the Covid pandemic and that earlier began to gain momentum when the MMR vaccine was decried by some rabble rousers as dangerous. Most of us will also be aware of the misery, ill-health, needless deaths and economic damage caused by such anti-vaxers. What many of us may not know, and what I wasn't aware of until I read historian Simon Schama's latest book "Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations" is that vaccine hesitancy goes right back to the introduction of the very first vaccines, was sometimes encouraged by health boards and was often linked to racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.
We often think of vaccines which have come close to eradicating some diseases and reducing the damage caused by others as being the result of developments in Western European science and medicine. As Schama shows, nothing could be further from the truth. In the first part of "Foreign Bodies" - "East to West: Smallpox" - the west resisted initially resisted vaccination (which often involves injecting a tiny amount of the disease into a person), instead believing that infectious diseases could be stopped by bloodletting, better hygiene and diet. Schama locates Asia - and particularly parts of what are now Turkey and the Middle East - as where the idea of injecting someone with a disease in order to build up immunity first came from. It also appears to have been practised in parts of west Africa: in 1716 the American puritan cleric Cotton Mather describes how one of his slaves - Onesimus - told him how as a child he had been vaccinated and he showed Mather his scar. Inevitably, no-one believed that an "uncivilised" African slave could be more than "rational" western scientists. It was later discovered that remote communities in the Scottish Highlands also used such methods.
Throughout the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, many western scientists continued to dispute the value of vaccinations, despite the work of people like Jenner and Pasteur. But thanks to the commitment and courage of several scientists (most of whom used the vaccines on themselves first in part so they would be the first to suffer side-effects and to show the vaccines' efficacy), much of Western science and medicine began to accept vaccination. But it was a long, hard battle, marked by the demonisation of some vaccine advocates, in particular some Jewish scientists.
Among the many men and women without whom we wouldn't now see vaccines as a core part of medicine, several stand out, far too many for me to mention in this review. They include Adrien Proust, father of the novelist Marcel Proust; Edith Pechey-Phipson, one of the first British women to qualify as a surgeon in the late 19th century; two Ukranian-born Jews Elie Metchnikoff and Waldermar Haffkine and the Indian Jewish businesswoman Farha Sassoon who funded a hospital and vaccination programmes in India in the late 19th century.
At the heart of Schama's book is the story of Haffkine and his work in India in the late 19th and early 20th century in combatting Cholera and Bubonic Plague, both of which were endemic in India at the time. His determination to develop vaccines and provide protection to as many Indians as possible was resisted by the imperialist British Raj and the Indian Medical Service (IMS). Thanks to the support he received from some Muslim, Jain, Hindu and Sikh leaders, who helped him and his co-workers persuade people to be vaccinated as well as providing him with facilities, he was able to provide protection to hundreds of thousands of adults and children. Aware of sensitivities in some communities around men treating women, he recruited and trained women volunteers to help with the task.
Sadly, thanks to an accident that wasn't Haffkine's fault, the IMS, the Raj and conservative scientists back in Britain were able to destroy his reputation. He remains almost unknown in the history of medical science, but he is as important in that history as the likes of Jenner and Pasteur. Perhaps Haffkine's political activism (as a young man he had been arrested for attempting to defend fellow Jews in Odessa from Russian army cadets) and his devout Orthodox Judaism (later in life he attempted to reconcile science and religion) made him an easy target. I wonder how many lives were lost due to the antisemitism that prevented Haffkine from continuing with his work.
He ends the book by looking at the way the US scientist Anthony Faucis has been treated for his promotion of Covid vaccines, mask wearing and other attempts to control the spread of Covid-19. Faucis, who for 38 years has been the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on HIV/AIDS, has recently been demonised for his Covid work. He and his family have been threatened and have been given Federal protection, as well as right-wing republicans as attempting to get him sacked and his work discontinued.
As always, Schama combines readability and detailed research in a history that has so much relevance for us today. Although it is depressing that conspiracy theorists continue to spout dangerous rubbish about vaccine science, it is heartening to know that so many people risked life and liberty to ensure that today we can be protected against life-threatening pandemics. I salute all of them.
We often think of vaccines which have come close to eradicating some diseases and reducing the damage caused by others as being the result of developments in Western European science and medicine. As Schama shows, nothing could be further from the truth. In the first part of "Foreign Bodies" - "East to West: Smallpox" - the west resisted initially resisted vaccination (which often involves injecting a tiny amount of the disease into a person), instead believing that infectious diseases could be stopped by bloodletting, better hygiene and diet. Schama locates Asia - and particularly parts of what are now Turkey and the Middle East - as where the idea of injecting someone with a disease in order to build up immunity first came from. It also appears to have been practised in parts of west Africa: in 1716 the American puritan cleric Cotton Mather describes how one of his slaves - Onesimus - told him how as a child he had been vaccinated and he showed Mather his scar. Inevitably, no-one believed that an "uncivilised" African slave could be more than "rational" western scientists. It was later discovered that remote communities in the Scottish Highlands also used such methods.
Throughout the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, many western scientists continued to dispute the value of vaccinations, despite the work of people like Jenner and Pasteur. But thanks to the commitment and courage of several scientists (most of whom used the vaccines on themselves first in part so they would be the first to suffer side-effects and to show the vaccines' efficacy), much of Western science and medicine began to accept vaccination. But it was a long, hard battle, marked by the demonisation of some vaccine advocates, in particular some Jewish scientists.
Among the many men and women without whom we wouldn't now see vaccines as a core part of medicine, several stand out, far too many for me to mention in this review. They include Adrien Proust, father of the novelist Marcel Proust; Edith Pechey-Phipson, one of the first British women to qualify as a surgeon in the late 19th century; two Ukranian-born Jews Elie Metchnikoff and Waldermar Haffkine and the Indian Jewish businesswoman Farha Sassoon who funded a hospital and vaccination programmes in India in the late 19th century.
At the heart of Schama's book is the story of Haffkine and his work in India in the late 19th and early 20th century in combatting Cholera and Bubonic Plague, both of which were endemic in India at the time. His determination to develop vaccines and provide protection to as many Indians as possible was resisted by the imperialist British Raj and the Indian Medical Service (IMS). Thanks to the support he received from some Muslim, Jain, Hindu and Sikh leaders, who helped him and his co-workers persuade people to be vaccinated as well as providing him with facilities, he was able to provide protection to hundreds of thousands of adults and children. Aware of sensitivities in some communities around men treating women, he recruited and trained women volunteers to help with the task.
Sadly, thanks to an accident that wasn't Haffkine's fault, the IMS, the Raj and conservative scientists back in Britain were able to destroy his reputation. He remains almost unknown in the history of medical science, but he is as important in that history as the likes of Jenner and Pasteur. Perhaps Haffkine's political activism (as a young man he had been arrested for attempting to defend fellow Jews in Odessa from Russian army cadets) and his devout Orthodox Judaism (later in life he attempted to reconcile science and religion) made him an easy target. I wonder how many lives were lost due to the antisemitism that prevented Haffkine from continuing with his work.
He ends the book by looking at the way the US scientist Anthony Faucis has been treated for his promotion of Covid vaccines, mask wearing and other attempts to control the spread of Covid-19. Faucis, who for 38 years has been the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on HIV/AIDS, has recently been demonised for his Covid work. He and his family have been threatened and have been given Federal protection, as well as right-wing republicans as attempting to get him sacked and his work discontinued.
As always, Schama combines readability and detailed research in a history that has so much relevance for us today. Although it is depressing that conspiracy theorists continue to spout dangerous rubbish about vaccine science, it is heartening to know that so many people risked life and liberty to ensure that today we can be protected against life-threatening pandemics. I salute all of them.
November 16, 2023
Excellently researched, engagingly presented. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author -- which I always appreciate, as they can lend emphasis where they intend it to be.
I did struggle with the overlapping timeliness in the various narratives of the book.
I did struggle with the overlapping timeliness in the various narratives of the book.
December 19, 2023
This is a complicated review to write with an urge to give it 4 stars but 3.5 is more appropriate.
Schama sets out to tell the story of three plagues - smallpox (18th century), cholera (19th century), and bubonic (of the late 19th century - early 2oth century). Specifically, rather than a tale of the ravages of those epidemics, Schama focuses on the scientists, and for smallpox, the quasi-scientists) who developed vaccines against each. In effect, it is a story of heroes of public health. For the most part, their names are forgotten to almost all.
Schama wrote the book in 2022 (Covid times) and had first hand witness to the pseudo science and anti-vax populism (ivermectin anyone?). As such, Schama's tale is heavy on the historical parallels of entrenched resistance to advances in science. This becomes most apparent in the tale of Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian Jew, who developed a bubonic plague vaccine and promulgated its use in India where plague was rampant. Not being a native Brit (although naturalized), he ran into intense resistance from his upper class "betters" who ran the India Medical Service of the Raj.
You'll learn that one of the fathers of modern public health was Adrian Proust, father of Marcel (who knew?). You'll learn that long before Edward Jenner used cowpox as an inoculation against smallpox that actual smallpox was used to inoculate against smallpox and this practice went back centuries. But, because such practice was either localized to rural areas or, in the eyes of the establishment, the Ottoman Empire, resistance to its efficacy lasted decades even after publication of comparative trials. Meanwhile, tens if not hundreds of thousands died.
You'll also learn that when bubonic plague struck the cities of India and people fled (or died), cities like Bombay ground to a halt. Schama makes a point of noting that these cities only functioned if there was a steady supply of labor to pick up the immense amounts of night soil - and, if not picked up, the cities would drown in their own waste. It is like when your toilet backs up - that becomes job one in the household to fix - now, scale up to a city and suddenly municipal government was willing to start vaccinating even the lowest castes.
Now, why only 3 stars? Schama, especially in the smallpox and cholera sections, has a tendency to introduce someone who played a role in vaccine development and develop their back story. All well and good. But then said person would meet up with someone else who played some role in that disease and we learn that person's back story. And if the second person also met up with a third party, we get their back story too. It is like chasing hyperlinks through Wikipedia entries before finishing the page you started on. As such, the narrative drive bogs down with minutiae. The reader ploughs along as there are definitely nuggets of interesting information and, throughout, the parallels to our own pandemic times are easy to spot.
I will note that this book is vastly better than the flippant Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
There are many illustrations and photos.
After reading this, you'll ponder how humanity has even made it this far what with plague outbreaks occurring on a regular basis throughout history (even San Francisco experienced bubonic plague just before the 1906 earthquake - see Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague). You'll also be plenty thankful for advances in science, in particular in this book, microbiology, that finally eliminated the conventional wisdom that these scourges arose from the miasma of fetid slums (and believe me, there was plenty of miasma back then). But getting the "authorities" to accept that their long-held beliefs of quarantining and disinfecting could be supplemented if not replaced by vaccines was a long and difficult battle for the scientists like Haffkine who feature in the book.
Schama ends on a pessimistic note that the forces of obscurantism, denialism, and libertarianism are likely to be ever present in thwarting the application of public health scientific advances with the inevitable greater-than-necessary casualties.
Schama sets out to tell the story of three plagues - smallpox (18th century), cholera (19th century), and bubonic (of the late 19th century - early 2oth century). Specifically, rather than a tale of the ravages of those epidemics, Schama focuses on the scientists, and for smallpox, the quasi-scientists) who developed vaccines against each. In effect, it is a story of heroes of public health. For the most part, their names are forgotten to almost all.
Schama wrote the book in 2022 (Covid times) and had first hand witness to the pseudo science and anti-vax populism (ivermectin anyone?). As such, Schama's tale is heavy on the historical parallels of entrenched resistance to advances in science. This becomes most apparent in the tale of Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian Jew, who developed a bubonic plague vaccine and promulgated its use in India where plague was rampant. Not being a native Brit (although naturalized), he ran into intense resistance from his upper class "betters" who ran the India Medical Service of the Raj.
You'll learn that one of the fathers of modern public health was Adrian Proust, father of Marcel (who knew?). You'll learn that long before Edward Jenner used cowpox as an inoculation against smallpox that actual smallpox was used to inoculate against smallpox and this practice went back centuries. But, because such practice was either localized to rural areas or, in the eyes of the establishment, the Ottoman Empire, resistance to its efficacy lasted decades even after publication of comparative trials. Meanwhile, tens if not hundreds of thousands died.
You'll also learn that when bubonic plague struck the cities of India and people fled (or died), cities like Bombay ground to a halt. Schama makes a point of noting that these cities only functioned if there was a steady supply of labor to pick up the immense amounts of night soil - and, if not picked up, the cities would drown in their own waste. It is like when your toilet backs up - that becomes job one in the household to fix - now, scale up to a city and suddenly municipal government was willing to start vaccinating even the lowest castes.
Now, why only 3 stars? Schama, especially in the smallpox and cholera sections, has a tendency to introduce someone who played a role in vaccine development and develop their back story. All well and good. But then said person would meet up with someone else who played some role in that disease and we learn that person's back story. And if the second person also met up with a third party, we get their back story too. It is like chasing hyperlinks through Wikipedia entries before finishing the page you started on. As such, the narrative drive bogs down with minutiae. The reader ploughs along as there are definitely nuggets of interesting information and, throughout, the parallels to our own pandemic times are easy to spot.
I will note that this book is vastly better than the flippant Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
There are many illustrations and photos.
After reading this, you'll ponder how humanity has even made it this far what with plague outbreaks occurring on a regular basis throughout history (even San Francisco experienced bubonic plague just before the 1906 earthquake - see Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague). You'll also be plenty thankful for advances in science, in particular in this book, microbiology, that finally eliminated the conventional wisdom that these scourges arose from the miasma of fetid slums (and believe me, there was plenty of miasma back then). But getting the "authorities" to accept that their long-held beliefs of quarantining and disinfecting could be supplemented if not replaced by vaccines was a long and difficult battle for the scientists like Haffkine who feature in the book.
Schama ends on a pessimistic note that the forces of obscurantism, denialism, and libertarianism are likely to be ever present in thwarting the application of public health scientific advances with the inevitable greater-than-necessary casualties.
July 23, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Ecco for an advanced copy on this history and look at the people and events around a series of pandemics, how government and the public responded, and how blame was assigned to those who tried to help others.
History has been very busy recently. Many historians who have only been able to look at events through other books, news articles and journal entires are getting a good look at what many used to write about. Coup attempts in the Capital, Pandemics, strikes, riots, anti-Semitism, hate towards the LGBT community. For all those people who wish for the old days, well here we are. This modern look makes looking back events different. Where one can't imagine how something could happen the way it did, one only has to look at Twitter and see it happening in real time. Soon the wildfires from Canada will be competing with the book burnings from Southern states in setting off Air Quality alerts. Which is what Simon Schama in his book Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations discusses and looks at. Paranoia at vaccines, accusations about profiting from cures, fear of masks and needles. Political points being gained by attacking the medical community. Add in some racism, and it is hard to say what ear Schama is discussing.
The book begins with the fact that nature was as confused as we were about the Pandemic. That nature was reacting in ways that seemed different than they should, just like in many ways we were. Schama looks at various diseases, how many started from natural cures, natural cures that really did nothing more than spread illness between people, like SARS, and how governments reacted, some by doing nothing, some by overreacting. Schama than discusses the role of people and governments fighting outbreaks starting about the end of the 19th century with a disease that was killing many people cholera. Schma spends time looking at the lives of individuals who were caught up in either fighting disease or living with illness, and uses their lives and experiences to show the broader story. Another very large aspect of the story is the racism that many felt was the root of a lot of these illnesses, and why should one country, say Britain, help a colony like India be healthy, when most of the diseases were there fault anyway.
Schama as a historian is interested in the story of humans, rather than the big events. Schama has a gift for finding people not only of interest, but people who have been ignored by history, and tells their story while illuminating what is going on around them. In this book there are many. Schama is gifted at showing and telling, not lecturing and the book is incredibly readable and interesting. There is a certain too soon aspect to the story, I will admit that. And a lot of déjà vu as reading about the attacks on people, companies, governments, and many of the racist statements.
I would like to say this is a hopeful tale, that we learned from our mistakes, but unfortunately it looks that we have not. I fear that we are in for very interesting times, a comment that can be taken as a blessing or a curse. A very different view of pandemics and reactions. I suggest reading this with The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about dealing with a cholera outbreak in London. The difference in science, and public perception as shown through this book and Johnson's is pretty huge.
History has been very busy recently. Many historians who have only been able to look at events through other books, news articles and journal entires are getting a good look at what many used to write about. Coup attempts in the Capital, Pandemics, strikes, riots, anti-Semitism, hate towards the LGBT community. For all those people who wish for the old days, well here we are. This modern look makes looking back events different. Where one can't imagine how something could happen the way it did, one only has to look at Twitter and see it happening in real time. Soon the wildfires from Canada will be competing with the book burnings from Southern states in setting off Air Quality alerts. Which is what Simon Schama in his book Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations discusses and looks at. Paranoia at vaccines, accusations about profiting from cures, fear of masks and needles. Political points being gained by attacking the medical community. Add in some racism, and it is hard to say what ear Schama is discussing.
The book begins with the fact that nature was as confused as we were about the Pandemic. That nature was reacting in ways that seemed different than they should, just like in many ways we were. Schama looks at various diseases, how many started from natural cures, natural cures that really did nothing more than spread illness between people, like SARS, and how governments reacted, some by doing nothing, some by overreacting. Schama than discusses the role of people and governments fighting outbreaks starting about the end of the 19th century with a disease that was killing many people cholera. Schma spends time looking at the lives of individuals who were caught up in either fighting disease or living with illness, and uses their lives and experiences to show the broader story. Another very large aspect of the story is the racism that many felt was the root of a lot of these illnesses, and why should one country, say Britain, help a colony like India be healthy, when most of the diseases were there fault anyway.
Schama as a historian is interested in the story of humans, rather than the big events. Schama has a gift for finding people not only of interest, but people who have been ignored by history, and tells their story while illuminating what is going on around them. In this book there are many. Schama is gifted at showing and telling, not lecturing and the book is incredibly readable and interesting. There is a certain too soon aspect to the story, I will admit that. And a lot of déjà vu as reading about the attacks on people, companies, governments, and many of the racist statements.
I would like to say this is a hopeful tale, that we learned from our mistakes, but unfortunately it looks that we have not. I fear that we are in for very interesting times, a comment that can be taken as a blessing or a curse. A very different view of pandemics and reactions. I suggest reading this with The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about dealing with a cholera outbreak in London. The difference in science, and public perception as shown through this book and Johnson's is pretty huge.
February 14, 2024
Foreign Bodies was released in 2023 and going by its cover and the title one would assume that it was about pandemics and the history of public health. There have been several other books written related to this topic John Barry’s The Great Influenze is an excellent example of this sort of book. With Schama’a reputation and having the advantage of a couple of years of hindsight from the COVID-19 pandemic I expected an insightful, entertaining, and informative book about past pandemics and the efforts of public health workers to combat them that allowed parallels to be drawn to our fight against pandemic disease today. I got none of that.
Instead, Foreign Bodies is what I would describe as a type of dated imperialist history that provides plenty of unnecessary detail but very little insight or even a detectable thesis. The main thrust of the book seems to be combating disease in Imperial British India and the author spills a lot of ink filling out the biographical details of some of the main protagonist’s lives we learn of the revolutionary conflicts of one doctor and his struggle within the European medical establishment but many of the details are in no way connected to the main point of the book and just have a Hollywood gossip feel to them. Meanwhile, in the parts of the book that deal with the actual people and places being affected by the plague and the British efforts to control it we learn very little. There is an entire page dedicated to a wealthy Jewish Heiress's efforts to stay Kosher in imperial India but when the actual Indians are brought up they are treated as a faceless group or the nameless extras in photos of all the great European physicians. For a book of over 400 pages, I would have thought that there would be a little explanation of how imperialism and British culture both exacerbated and helped treat pandemic plaques but rather there are anecdotes about the picturesque Ganges river and the wildlife as the people themselves are caught in a type of timeless Oriental haze where no progress is ever made except at the behest of some determined European willing to go again the grain.
I have read books like this before but most of them were written in the 1970s or earlier. I did not like them then and I do not like this most recent instalment. I would say this book is at best for the type of person who likes reading a history written in the style of yesteryear when one could put on a tweed jacket and retire to one study to contemplate the lives of the GREAT MEN of history. At worst, it’s a blatant cash grab by a well-known historian to tell a story that he could have written 4 decades ago and that sheds no insight into contemporary events and very little on what its title claims. If you are a fan of Schama’s other books you may enjoy this one but for new readers, this is a tedious read that is not worth the effort.
Instead, Foreign Bodies is what I would describe as a type of dated imperialist history that provides plenty of unnecessary detail but very little insight or even a detectable thesis. The main thrust of the book seems to be combating disease in Imperial British India and the author spills a lot of ink filling out the biographical details of some of the main protagonist’s lives we learn of the revolutionary conflicts of one doctor and his struggle within the European medical establishment but many of the details are in no way connected to the main point of the book and just have a Hollywood gossip feel to them. Meanwhile, in the parts of the book that deal with the actual people and places being affected by the plague and the British efforts to control it we learn very little. There is an entire page dedicated to a wealthy Jewish Heiress's efforts to stay Kosher in imperial India but when the actual Indians are brought up they are treated as a faceless group or the nameless extras in photos of all the great European physicians. For a book of over 400 pages, I would have thought that there would be a little explanation of how imperialism and British culture both exacerbated and helped treat pandemic plaques but rather there are anecdotes about the picturesque Ganges river and the wildlife as the people themselves are caught in a type of timeless Oriental haze where no progress is ever made except at the behest of some determined European willing to go again the grain.
I have read books like this before but most of them were written in the 1970s or earlier. I did not like them then and I do not like this most recent instalment. I would say this book is at best for the type of person who likes reading a history written in the style of yesteryear when one could put on a tweed jacket and retire to one study to contemplate the lives of the GREAT MEN of history. At worst, it’s a blatant cash grab by a well-known historian to tell a story that he could have written 4 decades ago and that sheds no insight into contemporary events and very little on what its title claims. If you are a fan of Schama’s other books you may enjoy this one but for new readers, this is a tedious read that is not worth the effort.
August 22, 2023
Simon Schama's Foreign Bodies is a bit like a talented but awkward teenager struggling to find himself. SS is a very creditable historian with a well developed side interest in art, and I was surprised to discover he's written what I took to be a popular science book and which, in part - but only in part - lived up to that description.
The best part of the book takes up the history of vaccination. SS tells us the practice existed as a folk remedy in the Caucasus and even remote parts of Wales as early the late 15th century, and was first adopted into mainstream medicine in Turkey. He then goes on to tell a story of public and administrative resistance with multiple faces: from religious believers who held that efforts to cure illness was a kind of subversion of god's plan/vengeance, from patriotism of the not-invented-here variety, from British administrators refusing to recognise health emergencies with the potential to affect trade, from "common sense" suspicion of the notion injecting healthy people with substances won from effluvia and, sometimes, feces of sick animals especially, from suspicion of vaccination advocates who belonged to a different religion/nation/class etc. It was very interesting to discover how these same public reactions occurred again and again over a period of about 200 years. Whenever a pandemic was virulent enough to terrify the public they would turn to and laud scientists. Once the threat receded, they just as quickly turned against these benefactors, wanting to forget them.
This all makes for a great and topical story, only SS could not hold himself back (and his editor was no help here either) from long deviations, for instance about Voltaire, about Zionism and about Jewish religious practices, none of which had much apparent bearing on the material.
Another large part of Foreign Bodies is taken up with the story of Waldemar Haffkine. Haffkine led an interesting and eventful life, and SS might have done well to write instead his biography. A brilliant researcher into vaccination as well as a fearless doctor in the field, Haffkine was constantly at odds with the authorities and SS makes Haffkine into a kind of post-Dreyfus, pre-Fauci figure.
The best part of the book takes up the history of vaccination. SS tells us the practice existed as a folk remedy in the Caucasus and even remote parts of Wales as early the late 15th century, and was first adopted into mainstream medicine in Turkey. He then goes on to tell a story of public and administrative resistance with multiple faces: from religious believers who held that efforts to cure illness was a kind of subversion of god's plan/vengeance, from patriotism of the not-invented-here variety, from British administrators refusing to recognise health emergencies with the potential to affect trade, from "common sense" suspicion of the notion injecting healthy people with substances won from effluvia and, sometimes, feces of sick animals especially, from suspicion of vaccination advocates who belonged to a different religion/nation/class etc. It was very interesting to discover how these same public reactions occurred again and again over a period of about 200 years. Whenever a pandemic was virulent enough to terrify the public they would turn to and laud scientists. Once the threat receded, they just as quickly turned against these benefactors, wanting to forget them.
This all makes for a great and topical story, only SS could not hold himself back (and his editor was no help here either) from long deviations, for instance about Voltaire, about Zionism and about Jewish religious practices, none of which had much apparent bearing on the material.
Another large part of Foreign Bodies is taken up with the story of Waldemar Haffkine. Haffkine led an interesting and eventful life, and SS might have done well to write instead his biography. A brilliant researcher into vaccination as well as a fearless doctor in the field, Haffkine was constantly at odds with the authorities and SS makes Haffkine into a kind of post-Dreyfus, pre-Fauci figure.
July 11, 2023
Opening lines of the book - "In the end, all history is natural history".
Unlike other reviewers, I thoroughly enjoyed the in-depth paragraphs providing a great deal of information about those who advanced vaccines/inocculations and their trials and tribulations. I treat the three seperate parts as books in themselves which - whilst there is a clear overarching argument espoused by Schama (*foreign bodies*) - is the best means of gaining/retaining knowledge of pandemics and their contexts. It was especially interesting to see how many were of a Jewish background, and focusing on Waldemar Haffkine as feeling himself to be - whilst treated as - a solitary outsider. He is certainly someone I feel we should know far more about, and I'm glad through Schama I've come to learn more about him. He also relates the treatment of past microbiologists and other scientists working on diseases with contemporaries such as Fauci where the likes of Elon Musk stated their pronouns to be "prosecute/Fauci".
On a more personal note, it was nice to read about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in its first section focusing on smallpox. I first came across her in a local National Trust property's gardens where there is an obelisk stating, "dedicated to the Memory of the Rt Hon. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who in the Year 1720 introduced inoculation of the smallpox into England from Turkey”. Her husband's family also came from Wortley Hall which is local to me. It was also fascinating to read about Adrien Proust, the father of Marcel Proust, and his theories in public health which he espoused far beyond the borders of France.
A brilliant read (even if he appears to misgender the scholar Aditya Sarkar).
Unlike other reviewers, I thoroughly enjoyed the in-depth paragraphs providing a great deal of information about those who advanced vaccines/inocculations and their trials and tribulations. I treat the three seperate parts as books in themselves which - whilst there is a clear overarching argument espoused by Schama (*foreign bodies*) - is the best means of gaining/retaining knowledge of pandemics and their contexts. It was especially interesting to see how many were of a Jewish background, and focusing on Waldemar Haffkine as feeling himself to be - whilst treated as - a solitary outsider. He is certainly someone I feel we should know far more about, and I'm glad through Schama I've come to learn more about him. He also relates the treatment of past microbiologists and other scientists working on diseases with contemporaries such as Fauci where the likes of Elon Musk stated their pronouns to be "prosecute/Fauci".
On a more personal note, it was nice to read about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in its first section focusing on smallpox. I first came across her in a local National Trust property's gardens where there is an obelisk stating, "dedicated to the Memory of the Rt Hon. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who in the Year 1720 introduced inoculation of the smallpox into England from Turkey”. Her husband's family also came from Wortley Hall which is local to me. It was also fascinating to read about Adrien Proust, the father of Marcel Proust, and his theories in public health which he espoused far beyond the borders of France.
A brilliant read (even if he appears to misgender the scholar Aditya Sarkar).
January 25, 2024
Foreign bodies is classic Schama. Impeccably researched, exhaustive in scope, rich in detail and in context. His books are always a master class in the value of good history. I found some of the discussion of politics and the science of pandemics a wee dry (nature of the beast, I suppose), and I shuddered at some of the disease details (I would have been quite happy to have lived my entire life without reading about plague buboes). However, as usual, I am in awe of Schama’s brilliance. This book is a timely history, full of historical context about how human beings, their hatreds, their cultures, and their governments often stand in the way of public health. As stated by one of the epidemiologists Schama writes about: “It is a curious thing that the public always hates its benefactors.”
And, so, Schama leaves the reader with COVID and Dr. Fauci. To know the past not only explains the present but also debunks the false idea that humans made steady progress toward our present. Sometimes we read history and find ourselves standing in the same place as our ancestors. We might speak a foreign language from them and experience far different landscapes, but in some ways humans don’t change much over time.
Perfect closing: “Contrary to what you’ll read in tabloid headlines or hear in the hoots and yells of social media, in our present historical extremity there are no foreigners, only familiars, a single precious chain of connection that we snap at our utmost peril.”
And, so, Schama leaves the reader with COVID and Dr. Fauci. To know the past not only explains the present but also debunks the false idea that humans made steady progress toward our present. Sometimes we read history and find ourselves standing in the same place as our ancestors. We might speak a foreign language from them and experience far different landscapes, but in some ways humans don’t change much over time.
Perfect closing: “Contrary to what you’ll read in tabloid headlines or hear in the hoots and yells of social media, in our present historical extremity there are no foreigners, only familiars, a single precious chain of connection that we snap at our utmost peril.”
February 23, 2024
It never ceases to amaze me how people like Simon Schama write so prolifically. Whilst the subject matter is germane and apposite to the craziness of COVID and the vaccination program, the book I read is not the book I expected. Thinking I was going to read a well constructed story of the history of vaccination and how mankind has the capacity to do great things, what I read was almost the opposite.
That being said this is an interesting book but would be better titled, "Outsiders save the world in the face of opposition from the establishment". ON second thoughts that title is a little clunky but it is more honest. Pasteur and Koch are almost afterthoughts, dimly lit in the backdrop of the narrative. However, the idea that man vs microbe is a constant battle (even if accidental) is one with which I wil not disagree.
Schama is capable of some diamond prose when he is being analytical of events. This book has a much more polemic feel to with a strong flavour of anti-establishment whether it be the Raj, the Tsar or the Medical (in his eyes they would appear to be a global conspiracy actively preventing health). Also, it uses the retrospectoscope in a rather sloppy way to justify his arguments. Now that we know what we know now, it is easy to make our forebears look primitive.
I am not sure what Simon Schama intended with this book. Whilst it is interesting their is too much onerver bias in it to make me want to read it again.
That being said this is an interesting book but would be better titled, "Outsiders save the world in the face of opposition from the establishment". ON second thoughts that title is a little clunky but it is more honest. Pasteur and Koch are almost afterthoughts, dimly lit in the backdrop of the narrative. However, the idea that man vs microbe is a constant battle (even if accidental) is one with which I wil not disagree.
Schama is capable of some diamond prose when he is being analytical of events. This book has a much more polemic feel to with a strong flavour of anti-establishment whether it be the Raj, the Tsar or the Medical (in his eyes they would appear to be a global conspiracy actively preventing health). Also, it uses the retrospectoscope in a rather sloppy way to justify his arguments. Now that we know what we know now, it is easy to make our forebears look primitive.
I am not sure what Simon Schama intended with this book. Whilst it is interesting their is too much onerver bias in it to make me want to read it again.
January 25, 2024
(Audiobook) (3.5 stars) This one was intriguing in some respects, as it looked at the impact of pandemics and public health emergencies on the histories and actions of governments across the globe, with most of the emphasis on the periods from the 18th century to the modern day. Admittedly, there is a bit of a British slant to it, with high focus on areas either under the British Crown and or those regions bordering the Crown’s territories. Lot of focus on “Third World” areas, but even the “First World” was hardly a sterling example of prioritizing public health and preventative measures over politics. If you think health emergencies and likely cures/health measures to assist were dismissed in the here and now, try back in the last few hundred years.
This is not all-encompassing, and even Schama notes that. Still, there is enough in this work to support his thesis about how humans and nation-states have reacted to health crises from pandemic-type events. Usually, it is not in the interest of health or helping others. Power is the priority. Not a lot has changed, unfortunately. Likely, that will not change in the future. A decent read, even if it does drone on at times in stories and details that don’t always tie neatly back to the thesis. Rating is the same regardless of format.
This is not all-encompassing, and even Schama notes that. Still, there is enough in this work to support his thesis about how humans and nation-states have reacted to health crises from pandemic-type events. Usually, it is not in the interest of health or helping others. Power is the priority. Not a lot has changed, unfortunately. Likely, that will not change in the future. A decent read, even if it does drone on at times in stories and details that don’t always tie neatly back to the thesis. Rating is the same regardless of format.
October 24, 2023
Although this is about global pandemics, it's also - even mostly - about unsung heroes in medical science. We meet vaccine pioneers and advocates from Pasteur to Proust and his physician brother, to the enterprising Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who bravely inoculated her children against smallpox when the method was still distrusted by most of her peers. But the true hero is Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine, a Ukrainian Jew who persisted in making and distributing life-saving vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague despite the distrust of the medical establishment. Schama is clearly fascinated by his life story and more or less hijacks the book to explore it.
One depressing theme is that vaccine resistance is nothing new. "As so often is the case, experience of the last epidemic dominated approaches to the next one." In 19th century India, "Thus it was that the war against infection mutated into a culture war in which militant nationalism struck a first, bloody blow." And there's more, as Haffkine is vilified and his research ignored by the powers that be. Sound familiar?
There's also an epilogue that gives due credit to Dr. Fauci, who was abused by many for his life-saving public health work. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
One depressing theme is that vaccine resistance is nothing new. "As so often is the case, experience of the last epidemic dominated approaches to the next one." In 19th century India, "Thus it was that the war against infection mutated into a culture war in which militant nationalism struck a first, bloody blow." And there's more, as Haffkine is vilified and his research ignored by the powers that be. Sound familiar?
There's also an epilogue that gives due credit to Dr. Fauci, who was abused by many for his life-saving public health work. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
October 28, 2023
There is a lot of material packed into this volume, and it is all good information, but for me, the message was a little muddled. I can agree that the health of a nation economically depends on the physical health of it's citizens, and therefore when pandemics inevitably happen, the powers that be are looking for someone to blame at least as much as they are seeking solutions. That happened with COVID and it has happened repeatedly through history.
The 18th-century development of vaccination was spurred by the mutation of smallpox into a potentially fatal virus. The English discovery that a small dose of the pus from someone with active disease worked as a shield against full-blown infection. Meanwhile, inoculation by insufflation—blowing dried, powdered pus up the nostrils—was state policy in China.
The Victorian age of globalization showed that disease moved as easily as goods through steamship and rail. The need for international coordination was obvious, but rivalrous powers resisted restrictions. So was born both vaccination and the skeptics who questioned it's utility and safety. The author goes on to tell the saga of cholera, and with it, all the prejudices that were fanned across the globe.
The 18th-century development of vaccination was spurred by the mutation of smallpox into a potentially fatal virus. The English discovery that a small dose of the pus from someone with active disease worked as a shield against full-blown infection. Meanwhile, inoculation by insufflation—blowing dried, powdered pus up the nostrils—was state policy in China.
The Victorian age of globalization showed that disease moved as easily as goods through steamship and rail. The need for international coordination was obvious, but rivalrous powers resisted restrictions. So was born both vaccination and the skeptics who questioned it's utility and safety. The author goes on to tell the saga of cholera, and with it, all the prejudices that were fanned across the globe.
October 24, 2023
In Foreign Bodies, Simon Schama, a British historian, lays out a sweeping social history of inoculation, a range of methods used to protect people against disease that would eventually include vaccination. In tracing the transmission of this idea, Schama's investigation and research moves from China to colonial Europe. He highlights forgotten characters, including a Greek woman who was one of the earliest and most prolific public-health servants, inoculating more than 4,000 patients herself and causing no ill effects.
Today, paranoia about vaccines and vaccinators is experiencing yet another outbreak. Anthony Fauci, who formerly served during the covid-19 pandemic as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has become a hate figure for many Americans. Conspiracy theories froth that vaccinators want to puncture people's skin to pump in tiny microchips... etc.
An interesting and insightful read. Schama tells a compelling tale and presents a formidable study of how blame, mixed with antisemitism has attended disease and vaccination through the ages.
Today, paranoia about vaccines and vaccinators is experiencing yet another outbreak. Anthony Fauci, who formerly served during the covid-19 pandemic as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has become a hate figure for many Americans. Conspiracy theories froth that vaccinators want to puncture people's skin to pump in tiny microchips... etc.
An interesting and insightful read. Schama tells a compelling tale and presents a formidable study of how blame, mixed with antisemitism has attended disease and vaccination through the ages.
July 24, 2023
What I liked most about the book is that it discussed what are to me, lesser-known aspects of the smallpox, cholera and plague pandemics of the 17- and 18-hundreds. Although there is some science in the book, this is really a history book. It deals a lot with societal response to pandemics and also with the effects of colonialism. Another strong aspect of the book is the biographical information on Waldemar Haffkine, a giant in microbiology. It is detailed and compelling. But as great as the subject matter is, the downside of the book is the stilted writing and frequent overly long sentences that had me losing focus. Overall this book is well worthwhile reading. It appears that this book is an early foray of Schama into the history of medicine and science. I hope that there will be more from Schama and his unique perspective. Thank you to Edelweiss and Ecco for the digital review copy.
December 25, 2023
I expected to be more engaged with this book. I'm familiar with Simon Schama from his BBC presentations on Tudor history, having found them informative and interesting. I've always been fascinated with immunity, pathogens, and the effects of pandemics on history. This book seemed to combine them all, but for some reason I struggled to complete the audiobook.
I did learn that the controversy and political in-fighting during our recent experience with COVID-19 has its roots far back in human history. Anthony Fauci was not the first physician/scientist to face unwarranted persecution in quest of public health. Schama documents a number of others who were similarly vilified for attempting to quell fatal outbreaks of small pox, plague, and cholera. The bitterness surrounding scientific medical advancement is truly shocking in far too many cases.
However, in spite of the information provided, this book was difficult for me to focus on. I can't recommend it.
I did learn that the controversy and political in-fighting during our recent experience with COVID-19 has its roots far back in human history. Anthony Fauci was not the first physician/scientist to face unwarranted persecution in quest of public health. Schama documents a number of others who were similarly vilified for attempting to quell fatal outbreaks of small pox, plague, and cholera. The bitterness surrounding scientific medical advancement is truly shocking in far too many cases.
However, in spite of the information provided, this book was difficult for me to focus on. I can't recommend it.
December 30, 2023
Simon Schama set out to write a different book and then his experience with lyme disease and the Covid-19 pandemic took him down a new path - and indeed a very interesting journey through history. From Voltaire to others who either were taken ill by a pandemic or by those who were alone in speaking out about possible remedies for the pandemics, this book covers a lot of ground. It is amazing and a bit depressing about how little changes when nations face pandemics -- the misunderstanding and the misinformation that creates its own pandemic in a sense. There are many unsung heroes in this book - who were ostracized, demonized, or even killed for speaking truth. This is not just a book about pandemics but also about human nature in the face of crisis. This is a long read but by reading one chapter at a time, there was a lot of rich information to be gained.
Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.
Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.
January 13, 2024
Interesting, but ir shows signs of being hurriedly re-written to be published before COVID fades from the headlines.
Firstly, this is not a science book. You will not learn much about vaccines or public health.
What it is, is an interesting account of the struggle to imprement medical discoveries on the general public.
The bulk of it is biographies of Adrien Proust and Waldemar Haffkine. These men spent years saving millions of lives for pretty much no reward or credit.
This material is sandwiched between the early history of smallpox innoculation and the demonisation of Anthony Fauci.
For, this is interesting but unbalanced. The biographical material is long and well researched. But in a book about public health, much of it is off subject. On the other hand, the other material is much less developed.
Firstly, this is not a science book. You will not learn much about vaccines or public health.
What it is, is an interesting account of the struggle to imprement medical discoveries on the general public.
The bulk of it is biographies of Adrien Proust and Waldemar Haffkine. These men spent years saving millions of lives for pretty much no reward or credit.
This material is sandwiched between the early history of smallpox innoculation and the demonisation of Anthony Fauci.
For, this is interesting but unbalanced. The biographical material is long and well researched. But in a book about public health, much of it is off subject. On the other hand, the other material is much less developed.
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