The Speckled Monster, Jennifer Lee Carrell
The Speckled Monster, Jennifer Lee Carrell
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The Speckled Monster
A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox

Author: Jennifer Lee Carrell

Narrator: Michael Prichard

Unabridged: 19 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/22/2012


Synopsis

THE SPECKLED MONSTER is both a hair-raising tale of courage in the face of the deadliest disease that has ever struck mankind, and a gripping account of the birth of modern immunology. Jennifer Lee Carrell's dramatic story follows two parents who, after barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, flouted eighteenth-century European medical tradition by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. Their heroic struggles gave rise to immunology, as well as the vaccinations that remain our only hope should the disease be unleashed again. Carrell transports readers back to the early eighteenth century to tell the tales of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston: two iconoclastic figures who helped save London and Boston from this scourge.

About The Author

Jennifer Lee Carrell is the author of The Speckled Monster, Interred with Their Bones, and Haunt Me Still.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Margo

I couldn't put this book down. Although a history book, it was written by a literature professor and reads like a novel. This is the story of the two people--Lady Mary in London and Dr. Boylston (with Cotton Mather's help)in Boston--who in 1721 each began experiments in smallpox innoculation as lear......more

Goodreads review by Darlene

Some of us are old enough to remember lining up at school for polio vaccine. It's hard to convey what it meant to our parents to know this childhood terror could be prevented with a simple oral dose of medicine (bless you, Dr. Salk). In the 17th & 18th C., smallpox destroyed populations, upset the ba......more


Quotes

"Highly engrossing...Carrell tells the gripping story with ardor and skill." —Smithsonian"Written in a compelling, almost novelistic voice, Carrelldetails two eighteenth-century figures who struggled valiantly against smallpox. The disease becomes a character in the book, claiming the poor, the rich, and the royal without distinction." —USA Today