Year of Wonder: Plague Stories
Isaac Newton’s Year in Quarantine
Guest: Patricia Fara, Emeritus Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge University
Quarantine in 2020 looks different for everyone, and it's much different from quarantine during the Bubonic plague of 1666.
Year of Wonders
Guest: Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders; A Novel of the Plague
In times of crisis, working together can carry us through. Author Geraldine Brooks recounts the heroic story of Eyam, England, who saved thousands from a plague by standing together as one.
How a Confederate Journal Could Help Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria
Guest: Cassandra Quave, Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Human Health, Emory University, and Curator, Emory University Herbarium
When we look back at the medical profession in the 19th Century, the picture we get from literature and history is of a profession often fumbling in the dark. Before the discovery of germ theory, modern hygiene, and antibiotics —doctors were as likely to do you in as save you. But a medical handbook from the Confederate Army might help researchers fight drug-resistant bacteria today.