Read Online The Medical Detectives Portrayed By Sandra Hempel Formatted As Audio Books

a horrifying slideshow of medical "treatments" that will make anyone glad to have been born within the last century, Sandra Hempel scours the records of Britain's repeated brushes with asiatic cholera in the mids, eventually focusing on the story of humble physician and vegetarian hero John Snow.
Roundly derided by the "miasmatists" who embraced popular medical theories of the day, Snow discovered and attempted to prove, through careful epidemiological mapping and interviews with victims' families, that cholera was being spread through tainted water supplies.


Personally, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for popular writing, fact or fiction, about plagues and epidemics.
It has all the suspense of a good murder mystery without anything so petty as a motive, At times The Strange Case is packed with too many irrelevant facts one gets the sense that Hempel wanted no bit of research she did to go unshared but some of these random asides are fascinating.
I particularly enjoyed some of the details of Snow's earlier work as a pioneer of anesthesia and the origins of those cascades of medical interventions that still rule obstetrics today.
And really, where else was I to

have learned that a fifteenth century colleague of Copernicus at Padua University wrote averse epic poem about syphilis

And so the story is a bit meandering, a bit slow to get to the point, but eventually a riveting tale of one doctor's quest to prove and publicize his suspicions about disease while hundreds died preventably around him.
It's a lesson about how fervently we can cling to ideas that are incorrect and unsupported, It is, finally, an overdue homage to a brilliant and dedicated researcher, In the early to mid's, cholera ravaged Europe, It swept into neighborhoods in the blink of an eye, killed hundreds or thousands in days, and then just as quickly disappeared completely.
. . only to pop up again somewhere else, . Family members watched as their loved ones went from perfect health to extreme dehydration and death in mere hours.
Whole houses whole streets were decimated, erasing the lives of everyone who lived within, Yet just as astonishingly some places were left entirely untouched, like the house next door left standing after last night's tornado.


The most horrifying aspect of cholera was how little was known about it, The speed and unpredictability of this illness flabbergasted scientists and public health officials alike, and doctors were at a loss as to how to cure the endless supply of dying patients.
The mad scramble to stop this unseen menace resulted in some alarming solutions, most of which only killed people and saved barely any.


And then John Snow, father of epidemiology and anesthesia, stood glowing like a radiant sun cresting over a shadowcasting mountain and proclaimed with insurmountable logic and wisdom, maybe.
just maybe, it's in the water! Sadly, only to be dismissed by his peers, his advice going unacknowledged and unknown by the general public.


John Snow is one of my favorite historical figures, and this is another fantastic book on his work during the cholera epidemics of the's.
So yes, of course I loved the book, It was a wonderful account of those terrible events, and this book in particular had a strong focus on Mr.
Snow himself, which made it all the better in my opinion, Highly recommended. The author did a wonderful job of keeping me interested in what could have been a fairly dry subject.
The story of the discovery of how cholera is transmitted is told in a suspenseful way, making this book an enjoyable read.
Excellent nonfiction book on a health topic for those who loved 'The Hot Zone,' anything ebolarelated, or anything omganotherhorriblediseaserelated.
Hempel does an excellent job of researching all the details regarding the three horrible cholera epidemics in's England.
I always marvel at books where so many of the 'experts' turn out to be total dunces, disregarding what's right in front of them and adhering to old ideas and theories which time and again turn out to be total crap.


My mother used to use 'crap' as catchall term for nonsense, garbage, junk, It fits in this instance,

So as I read I was alternately captured by Dr, John Snow's persistence and absolutely admirable doggedness in researching cholera and determining how it was spread and appalled at how the 'experts' of the day routinely dismissed his methods and ideas.
Common knowledge tells us he figured out one source of the contagion the Broad Street Pump and after telling the local authorities to turn it off, they did, thus ending the epidemic, at least in that area.
However, things were far from that simple, There is an entire scenario of characters here, big and small, selfimportant and selfeffacing and the story is a great one, marked by the common, tragic lives of the poor and 'lower classes.
' While an entire group of politicians and other officials hedge and waver and make a series of extremely poor decisions, thousands of helpless English citizens die.


A great read, I was bought this book as a gift a decade or so ago, and did try reading it back then, but didn't get very far with it as I wasn't reading as much back then.
I'm very glad I dug it back out from my TBR pile, however,

The author tells the tale of Dr John Snow's clever deductions about an outbreak of cholera in the Soho slums ofs London.
It's a tale with which I was pretty familiar with the central tenets of, from my own microbiology background, but Hempel adds a lot more to the story and puts it all in context.
Well researched, excellently told with respect to the grim times and upsetting environs in which the epidemics took root, and at a level which doesn't patronise the scientifically minded whilst still remaining approachable to the casual reader.
It all made for a very educational and compelling read,

However, I agree with some other reviewers in pointing out that the central tale of John Snow removing the handle from a pump and stopping an outbreak not that it was actually that simple doesn't make for enough of a story to write apage book.
There is a fair amount of meandering off on tangents at times, some biographical sections about minor players in the central tale which weren't exactly 'key', and Hempel does throw in a few paragraphs where I thought she was just having a bit of a go on her soap box.
However, it did make for an interesting read in the majority,

Plus, of course, it reminded me of the time I was on a date with a young lady when a young man myself, and I pointed out during our romantic dinner that the big grassy hump in the church yard we could see across the road from the restaurant was in fact a mass grave of cholera victims.
Who said romance is dead : Should you by any chance travel back to the first half of theth Century, you should kill any doctors you meet on sight.
Trust me, you'll save tens of thousands of lives by so doing, Fascinating account of theth century cholera pandemic which spread across the world and arrived in Britain in, The disease burst out in certain areas, killing people quickly with horrific symptoms, and then vanished, only to reappear somewhere else.
The medical profession were in chaos, arguing about both causes and treatment, while government officials quibbled about the cost of public health improvements.
Then John Snow, quiet and stoic, methodically set about uncovering the truth,

This is a very readable book, which adds plenty of background to the cholera issue without getting too bogged down in facts and figures.
It reads like a thriller or true crime story, but is well researched and well written, Famous historical figures such as Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens make an appearance, but the real hero of the story is not famous in fact John Snow was first ignored, then ridiculed and insulted, but persisted in his determination to share his research and make it count.


The descriptions of nineteenth century Britain, and particularly the slums of London, are eye opening and eye watering.
The overcrowding, the stench of sewers and drains, the squalor of orphanages and workhouses all these are described in vivid detail, and on top of that comes the impact of cholera with its horrific symptoms.


This book is engrossing and entertaining, and would appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of medicine and public health, particularly in the Victorian era.


Every so often I leave the world of fiction and delve in to other subjects, Historical discoveries, usually those that have a direct impact on us particularly appeal to me and this title stood out.

Now as the cover explains it follows the events that afflicted London and the country during theth century due to successive Cholera out breaks and the pioneering work done by one man John Snow no idea if this was the basic of the fictional character or not

The book covers the events that surrounded the various out breaks and work that was conducted not just by Mr Snow but by all the various people who became instrumental is finally putting the stop to them.
Both heroic and infamous these stories play out across an over crowded and disgusting unhygienic London rife with inequality and depreciation.


As the author Sandra Hempel says it was only a few short years after Charles Dickens had published his seminal critic of the system Oliver Twist that child farming, poor houses and cramped conditions linked to unsanitary practices and poor control over both sewers and water supplies meant that it was a matter of time before something of the nature happened.


The book not only charts the events from the scientific and medical community but also by the various characters involved from the clergy the politicians.
It does therefore at times waver away from John Snow but only to highlight the conditions and obstructions that were put in his way and how even in poor health he strove to stop such a devastating affliction.
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