|  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
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal