Mingus
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[SIZE=-1]The Pharmaceutical Journal[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
Vol 277 No 7411 p139
29 July 2006[/SIZE] Books
<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="621"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td> Historical exploration of early pneumonia treatment in America
</td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td> ‘Pneumonia before antibiotics: therapeutic evolution in twentieth-century America’, by Scott H. Podolsky. Pp x+254. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press; 2006. ISBN 0 8018 8327 X
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <hr> <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="620"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td>
This book tells the story of the early treatment of pneumonia in America from a medical perspective. It explores a relatively neglected era of therapeutics, between the start of microbiology around 1880 and the antibiotic revolution in 1937.
The book illustrates how therapeutic practices concerning infectious diseases sometimes differed between countries. In America, the favoured approach to pneumonia was serotherapy, which involved the administration of serum obtained from animals already immune to a particular micro-organism. Yet in Britain and other countries, antipneumococcal serotherapy failed to achieve widespread support. Pneumonia was never feared to the extent that it was in America.
The book consists of eight chapters in three chronological parts, together with an introduction and conclusion. Part 1 describes serotherapy and the rise of “specific” treatments from 1891–1930, part 2, the transformation of pneumonia into a public health issue between 1930–1939 and part 3, the start of the antimicrobial revolution and the decline of serotherapy, from 1939 until today.
The book is based on original research using a range of American archives. Most of the events described took place in Massachusetts and New York and the book is illustrated with extracts from the personal papers of some of the principal participants. Extensive notes are provided accounting for well over a third of the book.
The book is well-written and the text is supported with eight photographs and a table. It makes a worthwhile contribution to the history of therapeutics in America, but is likely to be of greater interest to the specialist than to the general reader.
Stuart Anderson
Stuart Anderson is senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and immediate past president of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy
</td></tr></tbody></table>
Vol 277 No 7411 p139
29 July 2006[/SIZE] Books
<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="621"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td> Historical exploration of early pneumonia treatment in America
</td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td> ‘Pneumonia before antibiotics: therapeutic evolution in twentieth-century America’, by Scott H. Podolsky. Pp x+254. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press; 2006. ISBN 0 8018 8327 X
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <hr> <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="620"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td>
The book illustrates how therapeutic practices concerning infectious diseases sometimes differed between countries. In America, the favoured approach to pneumonia was serotherapy, which involved the administration of serum obtained from animals already immune to a particular micro-organism. Yet in Britain and other countries, antipneumococcal serotherapy failed to achieve widespread support. Pneumonia was never feared to the extent that it was in America.
The book consists of eight chapters in three chronological parts, together with an introduction and conclusion. Part 1 describes serotherapy and the rise of “specific” treatments from 1891–1930, part 2, the transformation of pneumonia into a public health issue between 1930–1939 and part 3, the start of the antimicrobial revolution and the decline of serotherapy, from 1939 until today.
The book is based on original research using a range of American archives. Most of the events described took place in Massachusetts and New York and the book is illustrated with extracts from the personal papers of some of the principal participants. Extensive notes are provided accounting for well over a third of the book.
The book is well-written and the text is supported with eight photographs and a table. It makes a worthwhile contribution to the history of therapeutics in America, but is likely to be of greater interest to the specialist than to the general reader.
Stuart Anderson
Stuart Anderson is senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and immediate past president of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy
</td></tr></tbody></table>