Dr. Jenner and the Speckled Monster: The Search for the Smallpox Vaccine by Albert Marrin

From the Publisher

In 1796, an unknown country doctor named Edward Jenner developed and administered the world's first vaccine-turning the tide in humanity's age-old war against disease.

Award-winning author Albert Marrin explains the significance of "immortal" Jenner's gift to mankind as he narrates the epic story of smallpox, a disease so contagious and deadly it has dramatically influenced the course of history. From the mummified remains of its first known victim to the sinister threat of the "frozen monster" that lurks in the vials of ultramodern laboratories, readers will be held spellbound by this readable and timely combination of science and history.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-9-This is a fascinating, detailed history of the smallpox virus, beginning with its probable origins in a farm animal in Asia or the Middle East approximately 8000 years ago, continuing with its spread to Europe via trade routes, to the New World with the Spanish explorers, and concluding with the current concern that remaining stocks of variola may fall into the hands of terrorists intent on waging germ warfare. Intertwined with the disease's history is the biography of Edward Jenner, the 18th-century English surgeon whose observation that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox led him to conduct experiments that resulted in the perfection of the smallpox vaccination. Jenner is portrayed as a dedicated doctor devoted to what he considered a sacred mission, that of completely annihilating the "Speckled Monster" and demonstrating that science could ultimately triumph over disease. His dream appeared to have come true when the World Health Organization declared in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated from Earth, but the continued existence in the U.S. and Russia of some 600 vials of frozen variola, originally slated to be destroyed by December 31, 1993, is at the center of an ongoing controversy among scientists, governments, and the military. Black-and-white photos appear throughout. This title updates James Cross Giblin's When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS (HarperCollins, 1995).-Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A compelling twin biography of both Edward Jenner, inventor of the vaccine for smallpox, and of the disease itself. Opening with a graphic description of the ravages of the 1521 smallpox outbreak that toppled the Aztec Empire when Cortés invaded Mexico, the narrative then plumbs the beginnings of the disease in humans, the biology of viruses, and explores the sociocultural impact of smallpox. A discussion of various early methodologies of immunization leads directly into the life and work of the unassuming country surgeon who, in the late-18th century, doggedly pursued a safe and effective means of preventing the disease that regularly visited misery upon the Old World and virtually wiped out whole populations of indigenous peoples in the New. Jenner emerges as a likable and decent man, and a dedicated physician, one whose flexibility of thought and willingness to experiment recognized the immunological ramifications of the fact that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox never seemed to contract smallpox. Marrin (Secrets from the Rocks, p. 339, etc.) ably weaves in the scientific, religious, social, and cultural forces at work in Jenner's day without ever muddying his main story line. He then brings the story of smallpox right into the present, detailing the eradication of smallpox by the WHO and then discussing its potential impact as a terrorist weapon in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Primary source material is quoted liberally in the text, and although authorship is occasionally indicated when introducing an excerpt, there is no real link between these quotations and the lengthy bibliography and somewhat less lengthy Webliography at the end. This absence of specific source notesand a somewhat histrionic tendency to refer to smallpox as "the Speckled Monster" weaken the whole a bit, but it remains a readable and compelling offering, and presents a nicely detailed companion to Giblin's When Plague Strikes (1995). (Nonfiction. 10+)

Product Details