La narraci n perfecta de una historia de miedo, ingenio, persecuci n, colaboraci n y grandes logros, por el aclamado historiador Simon Schama. Pa ses sumidos en el p nico, desesperados por conseguir vacunas, pero temerosos del efecto de las dosis. Lo hemos vivido con la COVID-19. En esta pica historia de pandemias y vacunas el historiador Simon Schama describe c mo humanos y virus han convivido durante milenios y c mo la humanidad se ha visto atrapada entre el terror al contagio y el ingenio de la ciencia.
Con minuciosas explicaciones sobre los estragos de la viruela, el c lera o la peste, se engarzan apasionantes relatos y se presenta a un inolvidable elenco de personajes y ejemplos hist ricos, cruzando fronteras entre Oriente y Occidente con los que Schama demuestra que la erradicaci n de las enfermedades es una tarea no solo cient fica, sino tambi n pol tica, cultural y personal.
En el meollo de la narraci n, un h roe olvidado: Waldemar Haffkine, estudiante jud o, pistolero de Odesa convertido en microbi logo del Insituto Pasteur y aclamado en Inglaterra como «salvador de la humanidad por crear la primera l nea de producci n masiva de vacunas en Bombay e inmunizar a millones de personas contra el c lera y la peste bub nica.
Este libro es tambi n un firme recordatorio de la interconexi n que nos vincula a la naturaleza y a nuestra propia especie. En ltima instancia, defiende Schama, afrontamos juntos determinados retos de nuestro tiempo, como por ejemplo la lucha contra peligrosas infecciones. En esos momentos, «no hay extranjeros, solo familiares .
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon Schama
Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.
Characteristically, Schama's message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope - in hospitals and prisons, palaces, and slums - are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.
At the heart of it all is an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine, a gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as "the saviour of mankind" for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world's first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.
Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, "there are no foreigners, only familiars."
