Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art “There is something here to astound even the most seasoned medical historian. “ Patient Zero offers an encyclopedic presentation of historic outbreaks that tell fascinating and fast-moving tales of courage, tragedy, and loss (of life, of limbs, of freedom…of noses).” James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art “A fascinating foray into the etiology of fevers, flus, and other foul febrilities.” Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants Patient Zero is essential and-dare I say it-entertaining reading.” “Some of these stories read like gripping crime novels, some like Victorian tragedies, and some like futuristic thrillers. From Mad Cow to Monkeypox, here’s everything you wanted to know about the diseases you’re glad you don’t have. “If only my AP Bio textbook had been so fun. “A thorough and morbidly funny study of some of the world’s deadliest diseases… Readers will be swept away by this energetic and enlightening survey” ' rich and thought-provoking book. It's also a profound reconsideration of our common understanding of our most famous stories of sickness and science.'

Plus the uneasy history of human autopsy, how the HIV virus has been with us for at least a century, and more.

Interspersed are origin stories of a different sort-how a rye fungus in 1951 turned a small village in France into a phantasmagoric scene reminiscent of Burning Man. Learn the tragic stories of Patient Zeros throughout history, such as Mabalo Lokela, who contracted Ebola while on vacation in 1976, and the Lewis Baby on London’s Broad Street, the first to catch cholera in an 1854 outbreak that led to a major medical breakthrough. Written in the authors’ lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus-smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV-that combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more. From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks-how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us.

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