Ronald D. Gerste

This book should actually be more interesting than it is. The various essays are well written, and each of itself is interesting. But there is no overriding thesis, very little continuity between chapters, even ones that are of the same time period. The book is mostly medical essays about various historical figures, with occasional digressions about certain illnesses. In general, I found these more interesting as far as they went.

The author is German, writing in German, but lives in Washington, DC. His choice of individuals seems influenced by that. He writes chapters about 5 US Presidents, but only two modern Germans. Friedrich Ebert is the only person he writes about whose name would not be familiar to most Americans with an interest in history.

The only woman who gets a chapter is Queen Mary Tudor. There is a chapter on how illness has effected people other than top rulers - JS Bach is mentioned in the chapter title, but most of the chapter is about the eye surgeon who operated on him. Nobody outside of the US and Europe gets one, although Nelson Mandela gets a mention in the tuberculosis chapter. The other parts of the world only get mentioned as sources of illness. Even in the case of AIDS, only the effects on the US and Europe are considered. The AIDS pandemic in the rest of the world doesn't matter. I'm not sure how white male privilege still gets to be so obvious in a book published in 2019.

There is no index.… (more)