Review: “The Great Shadow”
A history of sickness proves enlightening and feels retro-normal these days
We are in the midst of a major surge of pseudoscience and anti-scientific information, which only makes the deliberate, winning, and calm voice of Susan Wise Bauer in her new book, The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy all the more appealing. Seeming to arrive from a previous era, where a history of science could (and should) exist outside of politics, her book restores a calming sense of historical perspective much needed in these troubled times.
Bauer’s work is engaging throughout. It is perhaps most powerful when she contrasts our aches, pains, and minor inconveniences when facing disease with the devastation illnesses wrought in previous era. In those moments, the book serves as a reminder and reverberation from history which sounds at times like “quitcherbitchin’.”
Diseases began to flourish as humans congregated amidst growing stores of food, attracting pests and enabling rapid spread. As travel increased, diseases mysteriously moved from city to city, population to population, decimating millions multiple times over. How people thought about what they observed, the frameworks applied to ourselves and our health problems, and how science slowly progressed to empiricism is gracefully outlined.
The book is a sobering reminder of how lucky we are now. Our experience with COVID-19 pales in comparison to the death rates racked up by other pandemics and epidemics. For instance, rather than no fatalities at the nearby high school with about 1,000 students, imagine what your world would have been like if 350 students had perished along with 700 of their parents in a single year.
Insights come often as you read, as in how priests delegated to acolytes the rituals of purification and relief, gradually creating an independent trade of physicians. From Hippocrates to Galen to Salk, Bauer takes readers on a brisk historical ride.
Perhaps best of all, it felt good to read a good medical history without the encumbrance of all the stupid going on right now, from MAHA to AI to biohacking. The book delivers sanity. For that alone, I recommend it.
Recommended.