Customer Reviews

Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?: Torrid Diseases in a Temperate World

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WHO GAVE PINTA is a disjointed but entertaining discussion of how several diseases were conquered. The book's disjointedness, however, makes it somewhat difficult to follow and leaves more questions open than it closes. For example, the author introduces yellow fever, degresses to other diseases and microbes, then returns several times to add more to the yellow fever story. It is easy to get confused between microbes, diseases and disease conquerors. Perhaps that's the price of Desowitz' attempt to portray his accounts chronologically rather than by disease or microbe. Desowitz also touches on various diseases' effects on culture, history and future events without exploring any topic in any depth, which is more tantalizing and frustrating than it is enjoyable. I don't think this book is as good as many other recents books of its genre, but is worth the price

I really liked this book. It really introduced to me the history of some of the most scarry diseases of our past and present. This book is very technical with great examples of subject points. Anybody reading it I recommend a big thick dictionary in your lap and a empty stomach.

Human parasites have been our close companions throughout evolutionary journey. Their complex life cycles are enough to make anybody squeamish. Hookworm larvae, for example, burrow though the skin of bare feet, and chew their way into a blood vessel. They wash through the heart, and lodge inside the delicate capillaries of the lung. The hookworms then crawl up the airways until they are coughed up and swallowed into the digestive tract, forming a blood-sucking worm burden that lays eggs to complete the life cycle through infected human feces. Hard to believe that in areas of the American South up to 12 % of the inhabitants (particularly children) were infected with hookworm less than a hundred years ago. Such subjects become fascinating in the hands of Dr. Desowitz, who never fails to lighten his dark topic with a bit of wry humor. Reading this book is like sitting in on a great medical school lecture that you'll want to remember all your life -- but watch out! You may never want to leave home again!

-- Auralgo