Rats, Lice, and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues Hardcover – January 3, 1996
Author: Visit Amazon's Hans Zinsser Page | Language: English | ISBN: 1884822479 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Review
"Zinsser's account of lice and men remains a delight. Written in 1935 as a latter-day variation on Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Zinsser's book gives a picaresque account of how the history of the world has been shaped by epidemics of louseborne typhus.....Zinnser's romp through the ancient and modern worlds describes how epidemics devastated the Byzantines under Justinian, put Charles V atop the Holy Roman Empire, stopped the Turks at the Carpathians, and turned Napolean's Grand Armée back from Moscow."
—Gerald Weissmann, Emerging Infectious Diseases
"This book... is listed among the best sellers. The style is delightful, and the subject matter very interesting... [It gives an] account of man's defeats and victories against epidemics... Those who have read Dr. Zinsser's articles will enjoy this book, and to otehrs it will be a pleasant surprise."
—Elizabeth Hard, The American Journal of Nursing
"No one who buys this book will feel cheated."
—H. M. Parshley, Nation
"This book will surely be studied with great interest by the lay reader... [I]t presents "a fascinating blend of scientific and historical research, humour, and stimulating opinion."
—The British Medical Journal
“I had the fun of editing Hans’s book Rats, Lice and History, that unique account of what infectious diseases had done to change the fate of nations.”
—Edward Weeks, The Atlantic
--This text refers to thePaperback
edition.
About the Author
Hans Zinsser (1878-1940) received his doctorate at Columbia University and also was an instructor of bacteriology at Columbia University. Throughout his career he was also a professor at Stanford University as well as Harvard University. His scientific work focused on bacteriology and immunology and he is greatly associated with Brill's disease as well as typhus.
Gerald N. Grob is the Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine (emeritus) at Rutgers University. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has been the president of the American Association for the History of Medicine. He is the author of The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America and, most recently, (with Howard H. Goldman) The Dilemma of Federal Mental Health Policy: Radical Reform or Incremental Change?
--This text refers to thePaperback
edition.
Books with free ebook downloads available Rats, Lice, and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues Hardcover – January 3, 1996
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers; 1st edition (January 3, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1884822479
- ISBN-13: 978-1884822476
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #940,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The copy of "Rats, Lice, and History" that I own was published in 1963, and this was the 33rd time it had been reissued since first appearing in 1934. I can't imagine Dr. Zinsser's grumpily discursive, masterfully written, and ultimately profound biography of typhus fever ever going completely out of print. Stylistically the only work I can compare it to is Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Where Gibbon occasionally dipped his pen in vinegar and excoriated the Christians, Zinsser dips his pen in hydrochloric acid and savages all of the quaint human customs that have kept Typhus alive and thriving. He shows much more affectionate sympathy for the louse than he does for the General or the Politician. Witness:
"The louse shares with us the misfortune of being prey to the typhus virus. If lice can dread, the nightmare of their lives is the fear of some day inhabiting an infected rat or human being. For the host may survive; but the ill-starred louse that sticks his haustellum through an infected skin, and imbibes the loathsome virus with his nourishment, is doomed beyond succor. In eight days he sickens, in ten days he is 'in extremis', on the eleventh or twelfth his tiny body turns red with blood extravasated from his bowel, and he gives up his little ghost."
In the interests of research, Zinsser carried pill boxes of lice under his socks for weeks at a time before taking "advantage of them for scientific purposes." He is not able to tear himself away from these little creatures and address the true subject of his biography, i.e. the typhus virus, until Chapter 12!
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