Customer Reviews

Invisible Enemies, Revised Edition: Stories of Infectious Disease

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Some people say that a book has "more than you'll ever want to know" about such and such a thing. Realistically, though, a single volume cannot contain all information on a subject. This book, Invisible Enemies, is not more than you'll ever want to know... it's a start to a whole new search for knowledge.

After I read this, I thought I should become an epidemiologist.

Though it was classified under the children's section at my local library, I was intrigued by both the cover, the description, and the title. I checked it out and read it; it contains summaries, drawings, history, stories, and explanations of many highly infectious diseases that have plagued man throughout history--six or seven, I believe. Included are: tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, bubonic plague, AIDS, smallpox, and malaria. Before I read this, the basis of my knowledge of smallpox was that it is mostly gone, with the exception of a few lab samples around the world. Now I know how the vaccination was developed, as well as its spread and symptoms.

If diseases are something even slightly interesting to you, this is the book I would begin with.

Never did I think that I would be reading, much less enjoying, a book about infectious disease! It is a tribute to the way the book is written, taking perspectives from several disciplines, that a non-scientist such as myself would be fascinated by this book. The treatment of tuberculosis is particularly engaging. It is apparent that the author has a keen understanding of this disease. I highly recommend this book. If nothing else, you can entertain your friends with stories of how the Chinese fought smallpox!

The author writes well and with grace. The topic of infectious disease is easily misinterpreted by terms such as "the deadly_________" that pervades the cheap popular press, but none of that here. She also writes with accuracy from having read the relevant literature. I do not think this a children's book but rather a chatty and intelligent exploration of the plagues of our times. I would place on the level of Hans Zinsser, Macfarlane Burnet but without the inevitable academic claptrap. Whether she will continue her frank and unembroidered style as she continues in academic medicine is anybodies guess, but if anyone can write a history of AIDS, she can!

Invisible Enemies is a book that will educate you about 7 diseases that helped shaped history, will make you respect the power of the tiny organisms we live with, and will not let you forget the most important part of any epidemic - the people. As a graduate student in the sciences, I was satisfied with the details about the diseases and fascinated by the details about the people.

Don't be fooled by the 'young adult' listing for this book -- anyone with an interest in biology or history will gobble up these well-researched, clearly-told tales of infectious disease. Chapters focus on smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, plague and AIDS, with an emphasis on the human conditions that made each disease so successful, and on the ways these scourges have altered the course of human history. I will be enthusiastic in recommending this book to graduate students in the School of Public Health where I teach.

This book isn't a technical medical journal, but a book about seven diseases and the PEOPLE who changed our understanding of the disease. You will also learn important facts about diseases, their origins, and current research.

I devoured this book quickly. It's a great read for anyone who loves reading about diseases and our history with them. I only wish it was longer because it was such a good book.

I highly recommend *Invisible Enemies*. I especially liked the stories of experiments done in attempts to understand and, possibly, wipe up these diseases. Guaranteed...you'll never look at a rat or a mosquito or an armadillo quite the same again.

My experince as a person with M.E. affected how I thought about the issues in this book and I cannot separate those reactions from my general thoughts about the book for this review.

To see the ways in which other illnesses have been treated and dealt with by government and society and to compare that with the ways Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) has been dealt with was just fascinating.

For example, in 1900 in the US there was an outbreak of plague in a booming seaport town (California) and with plague came the sensible calls for quarantine to stop its spread. But it never happened. Business leaders, aware that huge sums of money were to be lost if they were unable to operate for such a long period of time, either refused to acknowledge the epidemic at all or else they claimed that it was merely a disease confined to the Chinese - as by mere chance the first plague victim happened to be Chinese. The medical authorities accordingly took action against the Chinese and there was no quarantine. Meanwhile all but one of the city's newspapers refused to print news of plague. The governor declared, to protect business interests, that there was no plague. Despite there being very good evidence that indeed, plague was rampant, he then fired all the medical authorities who dared to disagree with his warped views. He even proclaimed that it should be made a felony to report plague in the town.

(This rings so many bells re ME!)

The book also talks about how medicine began to shift from valuing careful observation of patients and their symptoms to doctors not seeing or believing anything that was not written in a book no matter what they saw. "For instance, although, unlike most Greek anatomists, medieval anatomists, medieval physicians dissected dead bodies, and therefore had the opportunity to correct some big mistakes in the Greek books on anatomy, instead they had the Greek books on anatomy read out loud while they dissected, and tried to describe it the way the Greeks believed it to be"

(Again this rings so many bells re ME! This problem has not gone away and may even be becoming much worse as time progresses.)

It also talks about how with a slow moving disease that sometimes improves for periods of time all on its own, how many different `treatments' come to be considered useful for the condition when in reality it is all just coincidence.

(This irritating phenomenon is not just particular to ME!)

Society refusing to accept a new illness is not at all a phenomenon unique to M.E. either, indeed in some ways we have been dealt with far less harshly than some sufferers of previous outbreaks of other illnesses have been.

Tens of thousands of innocent Jewish people have been tortured and burned alive because they were blamed for causing plague (which was really just an excuse to escalate already existing discrimination and persecution) and people with Leprosy (Hanson's disease) have been buried alive - these are just two examples of many. It makes it feel so much less personal somehow to know that FOR CENTURIES awful things have been done to people who were unlucky enough to become ill with the `wrong' illnesses.

This book contains just enough detail to get a basic overview of all seven diseases.

It also has some fascinating myth-busting facts about Leprosy, now known as Hanson's disease. It tells about how 90% of people could not get it if they tried and the other 10% would have to live with someone with the disease for years to even have the chance of getting it!! Leprosy (Hanson's) is one of the very least contagious and least deadly illnesses there is, yet people with leprosy were known as `untouchables' and were often shunned if not actively attacked. Most of this happened merely because there was an error in translation in a religious text, which meant that the word Leprosy and the word sin were confused, and so Leprosy was seen as a sign of sin rather than of disease. People with Leprosy have even buried alive just for having the illness. If only society had learned form this mistake...

The only bad bit in this book is that it doesn't include M.E. as it very much could.

This is a really interesting read to give you perhaps more insight into how diseases have been dealt with by our society - and why we all need to be cautious about what we are told about different diseases today. I recommend it to M.E. patients and also to everyone else as well.

Quote:

"On most days, we go about our business not thinking about our body, merely using it to get where we want to go. But when we get sick we can think of nothing but our aching head or upset stomach. We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Infectious diseases have another troubling aspect: sometimes the disease comes to us from another person. This can turn the fear of disease into fear of one another. It is in this response to fear that humans have been both incredibly brave and incredibly cruel."

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E.

The other reviewers pretty much said it all. Compelling and entertaining. It's as well written as a good detective novel. What is especially interesting is how there could be anyone who would resist the idea of rats, mosquitos or contaminated drinking water having something to do with the spread of disease. How on God's Green Earth did humanity survive, with the population being 99% imbeciles?