I chose to read the first chapter of Typhoid Mary, \u201cThe Rigorous Spirit of Science: The Triumph of Bacteriology<\/i>,\u201d in addition to the introduction, for a myriad of reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, I hate picking up a book mid-way through, and having to figure out for myself what went on in the previous chapters.\u00a0 More importantly for my research, this chapter dealt with the larger ideas and views of disease in the late 19^{th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries.\u00a0 While this predates my research on the Spanish Influenza, it provides vital information about the state of public health infrastructure leading up to the pandemic.<\/p>\n}

The Rigorous Spirit, chapter one of Leavitt\u2019s book, traces the development of science, bacteriology, and the way that disease was handled at the turn of the 20^{th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 She outlines the development of the germ theory of disease and the way that it affected the way that public health was addressed in the US, notably by a shift away from physical duties (street cleaning, sewage systems) and to a system centered on laboratory research (trying to isolate and find cures for various diseases).\u00a0 She goes on to outline in broad terms the life of Mary Mallon, the so-called \u2018Typhoid Mary\u2019 of popular culture today.<\/p>\n}

Leavitt\u2019s book opens much like Gina Kolata\u2019s Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it<\/i>, a book a reviewed earlier in the semester for this class. This similar opening of both books encourages a discourse between them, which upon closer inspection are strikingly similar:\u00a0 they focus on a medical disaster and society\u2019s attempt to contain and explain it. \u00a0\u00a0What other links can we draw between these two disasters, less then 15 years apart, and what can we learn from these links?<\/p>\n

AJ\u2019<\/a>s post is thought provoking.\u00a0 Looking at the items offered for sale at the auction, I can\u2019t help but think about the people behind them, and the tragedy that made a piece of wood worth $100,000.\u00a0 We can find out so much about the Titanic passengers from these items, and this value is lost when they are put in private collections, away from public view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I chose to read the first chapter of Typhoid Mary, \u201cThe Rigorous Spirit of Science: The Triumph of Bacteriology,\u201d in addition to the introduction, for a myriad of reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, I hate picking up a book mid-way through, and having to figure out for myself what went on in the previous chapters.\u00a0 More importantly for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Rigorous Spirit of Science”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[116,248,406],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disease","tag-leavitt","tag-typhoid-mary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}