Description
Millicent, the abolitionist, and a conductor in the Underground Railroad, becomes Dr. Allen's wife. When they later employ Civia, a runaway slave, as a wet nurse they discover a woman of ever hopeful outlook and unexplored talents. Civia becomes indispensable to Dr. Allen's medical practice.
Anti-slavery passions join Millicent and Civia and force Dr. Allen to confront the nineteenth century medical theories attempting to label Negros as physiologically inferior. Then the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act results the arrest of Civia and her family.
Through it all, patients and practice force Dr. Allen to deal with the contagions of his day, including the cholera that drains life from the daughter of the very man who signed the Fugitive Slave Act, President Millard Fillmore. She dies under Dr. Allen's care.
Dr. Allen is drawn to investigate a typhoid outbreak in a nearby village. Joined by Dr. Austin Flint, their discoveries result in three scientific papers used as an investigative model by John Snow and referenced in Snow's 1855 treatise on London Cholera.
Dr. Allen is elected President of his county's Medical Society, makes the acquaintance of nationally known medical scientists, and participates in the 1878 AMA meeting where organized medicine argues the scientific foundation for the germ theory.
Bloodletting and Germs is a historical novel written as Dr. Allen's memoir. Citing over four hundred sources, it is true to the events of Dr. Allen's life and to the forces changing medical care in the nineteenth century.
Dr. Allen teaches us about managing the unknown as a small-town hero. His doctoring, and his life, put humanity's face on a period of profound scientific and social transformation.
Author: Thomas Rosenthal
Publisher: Bookbaby
Published: 08/21/2020
Pages: 348
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.32lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781098315382
ISBN10: 1098315383
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Historical | General
About the Author
Thomas C. Rosenthal M.D. practiced family medicine and geriatrics in both rural and urban Western New York for 40 years. He chaired the Department of Family Medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Science, University at Buffalo, edited the Journal of Rural Health and FP Audio, authored numerous peer reviewed scientific papers, edited a textbook of geriatric medicine and received teaching awards from the National Rural Health Association and the New York State Academy of Family Medicine. This is his first historical novel.