| View Larger Image | Quinine and Quarantine: Missouri Medicine Through the Years (Missouri Heritage Readers Series) | Paperbackby Loren Humphrey (Author)
| List Price: | $12.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | University of Missouri Press | | Page Count: | 128 Pages | | Publication Date: | February 01, 2000 | | Sales Rank: | 2,668,586nd |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Presenting an overview of medicine in Missouri from the early days of the epidemics to present-day technological advances, this work approaches the history of medicine as an integral part of the state's development. The text is organized chronologically in 50-year segments. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 1 review)
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A nice introduction that whets the appetitie for more by Paul Eckler (princeton jct, nj United States)  3 Stars
December 07, 2006
"Quinine and Quarantine: Missouri Medicine through the Years," by Loren Humphrey, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, MO, 2000. This 128 p paperback is another of the Missouri Heritage Reader series, intended for new adult readers, presumably for English as a second language training. As such, Quinine and Quarantine provides 12 articles (plus introductions), most six to eight pages in length, which survey the subject. Most articles are illustrated with black and white photographs from archive collections. The book is indexed, and contains a two page annotated list for additional reading, but no references.
In some ways this volume does an excellent job covering an extensive complex subject, ie the history of medicine, from the Missouri point of view. Hence, we begin in 1799, in the days of the French trappers and early pioneers, when purgatives and bloodletting were the usual treatments for most conditions. Quinine was one of the few effective medicines when used to treat malaria. Most other treatments had little value. Small pox vaccinations were available, but there was little understanding of germs as the cause of wound infection, and most surgery was a death sentence. Coverage ends in 1997, with passage of the state's Managed Care Reform Act, and an item mentioning heart transplants and rumors that celebrities are given preferential access to limited supplies of organs.
The history of medical education is especially well covered. In the early days, the best physicians trained in Europe, but they were rarely found on the frontier. Instead, most physicians trained as apprentices. The book takes us through the early medical schools. St. Louis University chartered in 1832, established a medical school in 1841. Missouri Medical College in St. Louis, started as a branch of Kemper College (founded 1838), affiliated with University of Missouri in 1847. Kansas City Medical College opened in 1869. American School of Osteopathy, Macon Co., was chartered in1884. Licensing of physicians began in Missouri in 1883. As late as 1923, diploma mills would issue medical degrees for a fee. A Kansas City reporter got one that year from Kansas City College of Medicine.
Missouri colleges were founded as follows: Christian College in Columbia, 1851; Culver-Stockton founded as Christian College of Canton, 1853; Westminster College, Fulton, 1853; Washington University, founded as Eliot Seminary, 1851; Stephens College founded as Columbia Female Baptist College, 1857; Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, 1870; Central State Teachers College, Warrensburg, 1871; Southwest State Teachers College, Cape Girardeau, 1873; Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, 1890. St Louis University purchased Marion-Simms Beaumont Medical School in 1903 for its medical school. Barnes Hospital, teaching hospital for Washington University opened in 1915.
Cholera epidemics are covered quite well. Asian cholera is a highly contagious diarrheal disease spread by drinking contaminated water. It first appeared in the US in about 1820 and spread throughout the country-usually along transportation routes during the steamboat era-as a series of epidemics. During epidemics death rates might rise to as much as 50% of the population. St. Louis was repeatedly devastated, especially in 1849 and again in 1866.
Cholera played a role in the understanding of germs as a cause of disease when John Snow traced an out break in London to a single contaminated well (1854). Improvements in public health-reliable water supplies and sewers-were major factors in stopping the epidemics, but strangely the book mentions the subject of public water supplies only briefly. The role of quarantine and the sanitary societies who helped care for Civil War soldiers in hospitals are noted.
The book introduces the subject of antibiotics and gives some description to Sir Alexander Flemming's discovery of penicillin, but the extensive work at USDAs Peoria, IL laboratory to make it practical during World War II is not mentioned. No mention is made of Missouri's pharmaceutical participants. Most would name Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, who made ether anesthetic commercially available and operated an "ether lab" to explore safe handling and additional commercial uses for this extremely flammable agent. Mallinckrodt is also one of two licensed producers of morphine in the US, and is a leading manufacturer of the active ingredient in Tylenol. Monsanto, headquartered in St. Louis, became the world's largest producer of bulk aspirin and also invented Celebrex.
The book has done a remarkably good job of covering a complex subject in a compact survey form. Readers will find it a useful introduction, but will want to check other sources for the complete story of penicillin, the development of germ theory (I recommend Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruit, 1926), and measures to improve public health.
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