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Get Well Soon

Get Well Soon

By Jennifer Wright

History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. Henry Holt and Company, 2017.

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21 mins read

17 Key insights

A brief summary of Get Well Soon

An illuminating examination of the infamous epidemics that plagued people across the world and throughout time, from their most likely origins to the deaths they caused, as well as the people who worked on treatments and prevention.

Key insights in Get Well Soon

1
What do you get from this book? An account of some of history’s worst plagues and the lives they impacted
2
The Antonine plague killed millions and felled Rome, despite Marcus Aurelius’s best efforts to keep his city strong
3
The bubonic plague resulted in heavy death tolls and city-wide breakdowns, but plague doctors and Nostradamus continued seeking cures
4
What may have been a case of mass hysteria was a plague that brought people together, rather than driving them apart
5
Smallpox destroyed the Aztec and Incan empires, though later vaccines were able to save Europeans
6
Fifteenth century Europe saw the spread of syphilis disfiguring many people who were treated cruelly by society
7
Glamorized by writers and the elite, tuberculosis was actually turned into a fashionable illness
8
Cholera was distributed throughout London due to fecal-lined water until John Snow recognized the issue and ended it
9
Leprosy was so debilitating that a colony was created to isolate the sufferers; only Father Damien dared interact with lepers
10
Typhoid fever was contracted by several elites in the early 1900s when their cook spread the bacteria
11
The Spanish Flu killed millions but reporters were forbidden from talking about it, making it easier to spread
12
Encephalitis lethargica is a mysterious disease resulting in severe personality changes, though Parkinson’s drugs provide temporary relief
13
Lobotomies were a manmade pandemic that beset hospitals and mentally ill patients in the mid-twentieth century
14
Polio causes paralysis but thanks to FDR’s research foundation, a vaccine was created, eliminating the disease
15
Summary of the key insights
16
Selected critiques in brief
17
Final word

Who should read Get Well Soon

Disease historians • physicians • microbiologists • medical researchers • anyone interested in history or public health

About the author of Get Well Soon

Jennifer Wright is a pop history author and journalist. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Cosmopolitan. She has written several books and served as the political editor-at-large for Harper’s Bazaar. In addition to print, she has appeared on popular television shows such as Mysteries at the Museum.

author avatar

Jennifer Wright

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