The Blue Death by Dr. Robert D. Morris
September 3rd, 2008Title: The Blue Death
Author: Dr. Robert D. Morris
Publisher: HarperCollins (2007)
Jennifer from The Literate Housewife sent me this book to review because she is super popular and knew that I am not and therefore would have plenty of time. This makes me sad. But what makes me happy is The Blue Death by Dr. Robert D. Morris! This book is EXCELLENT. It is really scary…but excellent.
Dr. Robert D. Morris is an environmental epidemiologist and world renowned expert on drinking water. I only know what 3 of the words in that sentence mean…but what I do know is that he is really, really smart. In The Blue Death, Morris takes you on a history lesson of waterborne disease and comments on the safety of drinking water. While a history lesson of cholera (and its discovery) might not seem all that interesting…Morris does a fantastic job of keeping you riveted. This book truly reads like a murder mystery. The protagonists of the story are famous scientists such as Dr. John Snow, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. The antagonist is devastatingly played by Cholera.
Apparently, back in the early 1800’s, before the aforementioned smart people realized that the murderous disease was in the drinking water, there were many different ideas of what was causing such a large death toll. Reading these ideas are comical now…but back then it was shocking the ideas they had! One famous Londoner who was in charge of sanitizing the city refused to allow that it could be that sewage infected the drinking water supply. Nope…he believed the problem was caused by altitude. So the further away from sea level…the better the air…the less likely you were to get cholera. Awesome. Victorian medicine is also hilarious. Most doctors at the time fought these types of disease with enemas and induced vomiting. This, obviously, hastened death via dehydration. One doctor, apparently at a total loss of what to do, put pieces of toast on a sick woman’s stomach. I don’t know why. I doubt he did either. I really want to read a book on Victorian medicine now – for the hilarity if nothing else.
Dr. John Snow was the first person to realize that cholera came from the drinking water. Unfortunately, he died before his idea was accepted by most of the medical community. This book does an amazing job at keeping you interested in microbiology…even if that topic sounds like a collegiate level nightmare.
Morris goes on to discuss modern day drinking water safety. Today drinking water is obviously far cleaner than back it was in the 1830’s. We run our water through some pretty intense filters, chlorinating the water and killing most of the bacteria. Unfortunately, we can’t kill all the bacteria that comes from the water source. There will always be some bad things that get through. Reading this part of the book makes me terrified to drink my water. Morris is very serious about drinking water…and protecting the source of the water is the best way to prevent disease.
Of course, all the filtering is done in first world countries. There are countless places around the world where they still drink water that also has sewage draining into it. This is obviously terrible. I know the life expectancy in these areas would go up dramatically if they could only get access to clean water. That is why I love groups, like Water Aid, who devote their lives to drilling clean water wells and filtering drinking water for people who have never had it before. Go check out a charity like Water Aid (there are plenty of them) and see how you can get involved.
So buy this book today. It is really interesting and enlightening. I promise you will learn something that you never knew before (unless you are a microbiologist).
Rating: 5 out of 5
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
This sounds fascinating. I recently read An Imperfect Lens by Anne Roiphe, a historical novel about the team of scientists sent by Pasteur to Egypt to discover the cause of Cholera – I highly recommend it. It’s well written and is a fascinating look at the most modern medical practices of the time (but it IS a novel). I’ll have to look into The Blue Death for sure.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:57 pm
[...] on Pages did. I dropped him an email asking if he was interested. Sure enough, he was. He wrote a wonderful review of this book. I would say that it makes me want the book back, but we Dutch just aren’t like [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
This is a wonderful review, Adam! I had to defend my honor in my shout out, though.
I’m so glad that you enjoyed this book and learned so much. You were definitely the right reader for this book. Great job!
September 4th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Came here from Jennifer’s site. I must say this is not my style of book either, but you have given a nice, short, ‘to sum it up’ review here.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Great review! My dad is obsessed with clean water, so now I have a good book to get him for Christmas! I really like your site. I need a place to get good nonfiction recommendations. I’ll be checking in often!
September 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
[...] at Letters on Pages wrote a wonderful review of The Blue Death. He graciously agreed to read and review it for me. Thank you, [...]