Halloween Time Books Reviewed

The Great Plague: The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year, By: A. Lloyd Moote & Dorothy C. Moote
Non-fiction: History, medicine, science 302 pages copyright 2004

This is the story of the Bubonic Plague that killed thousands of Londoners in 1665 to 1666. It tells the story using writing of the people that actually lived thru it. It included parts of Samuel Pepys’ writings, the “Bills of Mortality” that was published each week, laws, maps of the plague and other information to tell the story of how the plague spread, what people did to cure it, what people did to avoid it, and how it effected life. It also ends with a chapter on modern science and medicine and how we now deal with things that connects well with growing fears over superbugs. I liked all that I learned reading this book; however, it was a very dry read and really was slow reading because of it. It might be interesting for people in medicine to see how thing were done at that time and how new discoveries in science caused vastly different methods to be used, ranging from using the four humors of Ancient Greece to looking in the bodies of dead plague victims to see how it spread in the body.