Search Results: Returned 6 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 6
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2023., Adult, Greystone Books Call No: NEW 614.44 W964a Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A suspenseful, authoritative account of how the battle against a mid-century polio epidemic sparked a revolution in medical care. Americans knew polio as the "summer plague." In countries further North, however, the virus arrived later in the year, slipping into the homes of healthy children as the summer waned and the equinox approached. It was described by one writer as "the autumn ghost." Intensive care units and mechanical ventilation are the crucial foundation of modern medical care: without them, the appalling death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic would be even higher. In The Autumn Ghost, Dr. Hannah Wunsch traces the origins of these two innovations back to a polio epidemic in the autumn of 1952. Drawing together compelling testimony from doctors, nurses, medical students, and patients, Wunsch relates a gripping tale of an epidemic that changed the world. In vivid, captivating chapters, Wunsch tells the dramatic true story of how insiders and iconoclasts came together in one overwhelmed hospital in Copenhagen to save the lives of many polio patients dying of respiratory failure. Their radical advances in care marked a turning point in the treatment of patients around the world--from the rise of life support and the creation of intensive care units to the evolution of rehabilitation medicine. Moving and informative, The Autumn Ghost will leave readers in awe of the courage of those who battled the polio epidemic, and grateful for the modern medical care they pioneered.
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-- Variole2010., Adult, distributed exclusively in Canada by Mongrel Media and the National Film Board Call No: DVD 363.348 L674o Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Pandemics have killed more people throughout history than all wars combined. They are unpredictable <U+2014> and inevitable. Are we ready for the next big one? Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague juxtaposes a 21st century scenario against the little-known story of the 1885 smallpox epidemic that devastated Montreal. Revisiting North America<U+2019>s last major encounter with the dreaded "Red Death," it vividly evokes a modern city under siege. By the late 19th century Montreal was Canada<U+2019>s leading metropolis, and smallpox was preventable. So when an inbound train conductor displayed symptoms of the disease, authorities should have been able to contain the infection. But a string of fatal errors and mishaps would muddy the waters -- and a tainted batch of vaccine would sow panic and mistrust in a city already divided by language, religion and class. Epidemics feed on chaos <U+2014> and by the time it had run its terrible course, the 1885 plague had claimed over 2500 lives, mostly children from the city<U+2019>s impoverished French-speaking slums. This cautionary history injects Outbreak with dramatic urgency, as Dr Teresa Tam <U+2014> who oversees Canada<U+2019>s Federal Emergency Response Team -- joins epidemiologist Michael Libman and other experts to speculate on the possible trajectory of a contemporary pandemic."--NFB.
![Outbreak [DVD] (2010) Directed by Jefferson Lewis : anatomy of a plague.](/Library/images/~imageCT75064.JPG "Outbreak [DVD] (2010) Directed by Jefferson Lewis : anatomy of a plague.")
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2018., General, Vintage Call No: 614.5 S757p Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to Word War I. Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. Telling the story from the point of view of those who lived through it, she shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered; and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test. A catastrophe that changed humanity for decades to come, and continues to make itself felt today. The author demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant - if not more so - as two world wars in shaping the modern world; in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts. Laura Spinney is a science journalist.
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-- Story of the deadliest influenza in history2018., Michael O'Mara Books Limited Call No: 614 A752p Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people. German soldiers termed it Blitzkatarrh, British soldiers called it Flanders Grippe, but globally the pandemic gained the notorious title of 'Spanish Flu'. Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died, in the United States it was 750,000, five times its total military fatalities in the war, while European deaths reached over two million. The numbers are staggering. And yet at the time, news of the danger was suppressed for fear of impacting war-time morale. Even today these figures are shocking to many - the war still hiding this terrifying menace in its shadow. And behind the numbers are human lives, stories of those who suffered and fought it - in the hospitals and laboratories. Catharine Arnold traces the course of the disease, its origins and progress, across the globe via these remarkable people. Some are well known to us, like British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and writers Robert Graves and Vera Brittain, but many more are unknown. They are the doughboys from the US, gold miners in South Africa, schoolgirls in Great Britain and many others. Published 100 years after the most devastating pandemic in world history, Pandemic 1918 uses previously unpublished records, memoirs, diaries and government publications to uncover the human story of 1918"--Publisher's description.
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2022., Adult, McClelland & Stewart Call No: Fic Yan Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarianrule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him-- and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness. To Paradise is a fin-de-siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara's understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love-- partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens-- and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
