Jacket Image



Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Jennifer Wright

List price £18.99
Product Details
Format:
Hardback
ISBN:
9781627797467
Published:
01 Mar 2017
Publisher:
Macmillan
Dimensions:
336 pages - 210 x 140 x 25mm

Categories:

In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nineteenth-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome—a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure. And in turn-of-the-century New York, an Irish cook caused two lethal outbreaks of typhoid fever, a case that transformed her into the notorious Typhoid Mary and led to historic medical breakthroughs.

Throughout time, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the plagues they've suffered from. Get Well Soon delivers the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues in human history, as well as stories of the heroic figures who fought to ease their suffering. With her signature mix of in-depth research and upbeat storytelling, and not a little dark humour, Jennifer Wright explores history’s most gripping and deadly outbreaks.

A humorous book about history's worst plagues—from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio—and the heroes who fought them

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