Clinic News

Taming Infection: The American Response to Illness from Smallpox to Covid

Clinic physician Gregg Coodley M.D. has published a new book, Taming Infection: The American Response to Illness from Smallpox to Covid. Written with coauthor David Sarasohn, Taming Infection tells the story of 15 major infections in American history. These include once common diseases such as tuberculosis, yellow fever, malaria and typhoid up to the modern epidemic of Covid-19. We look at how each affected our nation’s history and the American responses to the various epidemics and chronic endemic infection. 

 The book is currently available at Annie Blooms, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads and Amazon 

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Midwest Book Review

Taming Infection: The American Response to Illness from Smallpox to Covid is a wide-ranging history of pandemics in America that will enjoy newfound interest with the current pandemic struggle. This is not the first time the subject has been captured in a book, but what sets Taming Infection apart from other medical and social histories is its attention to the link between health and science findings and public policy-setting, which either embraces these recommendations or resists the notion of sweeping social change.

It uses examples of the fifteen worst diseases to strike the United States as touchstones for discussing these connections, blending history with social and health issues to consider the evolution of American epidemics and their special challenges to public policy-makers.

Readers with little medical history background might be surprised to learn that tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, and cholera were once endemic to the United States. Each sweeping threat introduced an unprecedented challenge to politicians and policy-makers who were in charge of regulating and directing public health responses.

Heavily footnoted, with many quotes from source materials and first-hand experiences of the past, Taming Infection offers the opportunity to reconsider the policies and experiences of the past with a new eye to managing and understanding present-day public response and health community efforts.

The history documented herein is surprisingly extensive, offering many references readers will find intriguing: "Vaccination was brought to the United States by Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in 1800. In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson vaccinated his own family, neighbors, and some visiting Mohican Indians and arranged to import cowpox from England. Jefferson wrote Jenner, “Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility. You have erased from the calendar of human afflictions one of its greatest.” Jefferson also devised a way to preserve the vaccine from heat by insulating it in water."

From how diseases spread, whether in civilian or military circles, to how vaccinations were developed, disseminated, and promoted, Taming Infection is more than a medical history. It offers many social inspections of how treatments were not just created, but promoted among various populaces.

This dual attention to social analysis will particularly intrigue students of social issues history and development: "Historian David Jones observed, “One dramatic aspect of epidemic response is the desire to assign responsibility, From Jews in medieval Europe to meat mongers in Chinese markets, someone is always blamed… stigmatization follows closely on the heels of every pathogen.”

The result is a wide-ranging history that should appeal to a broad audience, from students of social issues and healthcare to those involved in political science studies and the process of developing disease protections.

Heavily footnoted, peppered with authoritative source material references, and strong in photos, charts and graphs, Taming Infection is highly recommended for library collections strong in medical history, social examination, and political science and public policy alike.

D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Executive profiles – A company is only as strong as its executive leadership. This is a good place to show off who’s occupying the corner offices. Write a nice bio about each executive that includes what they do, how long they’ve been at it, and what got them to where they are.

Taming Infection: The American Response to Illness from Smallpox to Covid

By: Gregg Coodley and David Sarasohn
Published by: Atmosphere Press
Publication Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1639883189
Reviewed By: Barbara Bamberger Scott
Review Date: May 26, 2022

Purchase on Amazon

Co-authors, physician Coodley and editor Sarasohn, have collaborated to remind and inform Americans about the prevalence of physical scourges, plagues, and pandemics that have deeply affected our nation from earliest times to the current day.

The topics covered in Taming Infection begin with tuberculosis, a disease still to some degree extant but far more curable than it once was. Its spread through airborne transmission was presumably exacerbated by large numbers of people living in crowded conditions, leading to slow, painful death. Pioneering medical research suggested that TB was caused by germs, microbes, tiny almost invisible entities that entered the body through various means. This basic model has gradually emerged as medical fact regarding most forms of illness, with the microbes being carried in some cases by rats (the plague), mosquitos (malaria) or water supply (cholera).

The diseases explored here also include smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, syphilis, influenza, AIDS, measles, diphtheria, pneumococcus, and Covid-19. With the exception of AIDS and Covid-19, nearly all these massively destructive maladies have been known and noted since record keeping became common. The earliest influenza epidemic occurred in North America soon after Columbus landed and also affected pilgrim settlements in New England. The outbreak of the so-named Spanish Influenza in the early twentieth century affected and was affected by the migration of soldiers to and from Europe in World War I, and its treatment has early similarities to the recent Covid-19 phenomena, including mask mandates and the disparities between what the public were told by government and what they were seeing in their own families and regions.

The authors offer copious data throughout this admirable collocation, with reference listings of several pages concerning each of the diseases examined. They conclude that “the conflict between humans and pathogens is an ongoing struggle.” It is certain that new diseases and new strains of bacteria will continue to arise, and the question for all Americans is how to react to deal with them – medically, socially, and individually.

Quill says: In Taming Infection, Coodley and Sarasohn have constructed a scholarly guide that concerns and should be accessed by all Americans, calmly and accurately setting forth the history of communicable diseases and their ravages as an alert to handling the next national medical crisis.

For further information on Taming Infection: The American Response to Illness from Smallpox to Covid, please visit the book's website at: www.taminginfection.com

The Green Years 1964-76: When Democrats and Republicans United to Repair the Earth  

Coauthored with David Sarasohn, The Green Years 1964-76: When Democrats and Republicans United to Repair the Earth, tells the story of the years when most of the major environmental laws in the Untied States were enacted. From the Wilderness Act of 1964 through Earth Day, the creation of the environmental Protection Agency, and a host of other measures, the book looks at what happened to make this success possible. The book was published in September, 2021 by the University Press of Kansas. More information is available on www.greenyears.us. Books may be purchased via the University Press of Kansas and hopefully should be available soon via Amazon and at the Annie Blooms bookstore.