Battle for Our Lives (eBook)

Our Immune System's War Against the Microbes That Aim to Invade Us

Daniel Keays (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
740 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-218-30231-3 (ISBN)

'The Battle For Our Lives' attempts to share the fascinating subject of the engagement of our immune system against the microbes that attack us in a conversational, understandable tone. Words like interleukin, interferon, pathogenicity, virulence, and immunomodulation are explained in simple but complete terms. 'Eschew obfuscation!' While microbe versus immune system is vitally interesting, so are some of the stories about the battles against infectious afflictions conducted throughout the ages. Tales of incredible courage, fortitude, tragedy, and triumph are gripping and enlightening. Stories of Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, and many other indomitable researchers are discussed. Everybody gets an infectious disease. Common colds, athlete's foot, urinary tract infections, inflamed fingernails, diarrhea, sore throat, COVID and so many more. 'The Battle for Our Lives' gives an easy-to-understand and thorough explanation of the battle within us.

The field of infectious diseases is fascinating. Mystery, intrigue, victory, and devastation are encountered on many levels. Both the invading microbes and their competitors within the immune system are complex. The diseases fomented and the human response makes for gripping tales. But the in-depth study of infectious diseases is decidedly one of the most complicated subjects out there. The innumerable indecipherable terms and the scientific jargon that goes with it make most people want to take a pass at learning more about it. "e;The Battle For Our Lives"e; attempts to share the fascinating subject of the engagement of our immune system against the microbes that attack us in a conversational, understandable tone. Words like interleukin, interferon, pathogenicity, virulence, and immunomodulation are explained in simple but complete terms. "e;Eschew obfuscation!"e;While microbe versus immune system is vitally interesting, so are some of the stories about the battles against infectious afflictions conducted throughout the ages. Tales of incredible courage, fortitude, tragedy, and triumph are gripping and enlightening. Stories of Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, and many other indomitable researchers are discussed. Everybody gets an infectious disease. Common colds, athlete's foot, urinary tract infections, inflamed fingernails, diarrhea, sore throat, COVID and so many more. "e;The Battle For Our Lives"e; gives an easy-to-understand and thorough explanation of the battle within us. It's a compelling story.

Chapter 1

Sanitation Transformation

Born to affluence,

Life committed to the poor.

Dear Filomena

Florence Nightingale was one of the most influential people of the 19th century. She was also one of the most enigmatic. Her very name conjures up an image, the context of which depends on the version of history one has read about her.

Her name is unusual, and how she came about it was even more remarkable. The original family name was Shore. William Shore’s father had a wealthy uncle they called “Crazy Uncle Peter.” Uncle Peter told William he would bequeath his fortune if he changed his surname from Shore to Nightingale. Nobody seemed to know why, but William complied. Shortly after that, William married Fanny, seven years his senior, and they and their fortune traveled to Italy. In Naples, in 1819, they had their first daughter Parthenope. A year later, their second daughter, named after the city of her birth, was born in Florence. They were the couple's only two children, but they were indeed a handful.

Right from the beginning, Florence was a bit unusual. She was exceptionally bright, as was her father, who didn’t have to work. He spent much of his time educating his two daughters, who came to know several languages and were very familiar with classic literature and philosophy. Florence was one of the few girls of the era allowed to study mathematics, and she excelled in geometry and the newly formed discipline of statistics. She also developed a fondness for the natural sciences and religion.

The Nightingales were not among the super-rich, but they did live comfortably with two country estates. They frequently hosted lavish parties with very well-renowned guests. Florence had to perform her duties as hostess, but she took great delight in picking the brains of some of the intellectuals and politically well-connected. By a relatively young age, she became brilliantly educated and politically astute.

In those days, a young lady of the upper middle class had two choices about her life, no matter how well educated. She was either to marry or stay home and help care for her family. That was about it. Florence, though, sought another direction.

Tall and willowy, Florence was quite an attractive woman. She had several suitors, one interested her, and she came close to tying the knot. But a profound event in her early life played on her mind, and she was overwhelmed by it. She had had a “vision” and was “told by God to pursue her passion.” We, of course, will never know the nature of this vision, but to her, it was intimate, personal, and profound. She truly felt God Himself called her to follow a career. She was especially attracted to nursing and assumed that was her destiny. There was just one problem, but it was a beaut: In those days, nurses were often the dregs of society. Women who couldn’t make it in service took to “nursing” instead. Many women in the profession were coarse, alcoholic, and of low moral standards. One could imagine the reaction of Florence’s family when she declared her desire to enter nursing as a profession.

Her mother was particularly incensed and perplexed. It wasn’t that she was unkind. She and Florence often visited their less fortunate workers and neighbors, giving them gifts of food and other provisions. Florence was not only allowed but also encouraged to visit and care for their sick neighbors and tenants. But nursing as a profession and calling? Absolutely not.

Florence had a lot of skills and attributes, but her most robust feature was her tenacity. She just wouldn’t let up. Finally, her mother allowed her to train as a nurse in Germany, where the profession had a higher standing, and to work part-time at a nearby medical clinic. Fanny probably was tired of the incessant supplications and threw her a bone, hoping the scene's reality would eventually dissuade her.

Then fate intervened.

Florence applied for and was given the chief administrator position of a clinic for indigent women. Before her arrival, the “clinic” was pretty much a place to go to die. Many workers were underpaid, untrustworthy, wretched women given to drink and debauchery. The clinic was poorly managed as to provisions and productivity. It was the type of place that would achieve prominence in a Charles Dickens novel.

Florence’s influence was profound. She called upon all her skills in organization and administration to quickly clean up how the place was run, firing the poor workers and motivating the promising ones. She arranged the supplies and materials so the workers would be more productive and wouldn’t waste as much time. She appealed to many of her contacts in the higher realms of society for extra funding. But most of all, she brought a sense of care and compassion to the workplace. She genuinely and deeply cared for the sick and dying; her example was a powerful motivation. Here was this attractive, wealthy woman of high intellect stooping down to make the lives of these unfortunate outcasts a little more bearable. The transformation of this one clinic in London in a few months set the tone for her entire career.

(It is interesting to note that the clinic at which she worked was the one closest to Broad Street in the Soho district, where Dr. John Snow made his famous discovery of the source of a cholera epidemic after removing the handle of a water pump, thereby halting the disease. Florence undoubtedly knew of this significant discovery).

In 1854, another set of circumstances formed Florence Nightingale’s place in history. The Crimean War, in which Great Britain fought to curtail the advances of Russia in the Middle East, was underway. As in all wars, young men marched off to battle with visions of glory and adventure etched in their minds. Of course, the reality is much different. But the Crimean campaign was unique: The Times of London sent a reporter to the scene, William Howard Russell, who filed regular reports as an embedded journalist. With the invention of the telegraph and undersea cable laying, his words reached home in a few hours. People were appalled by what they read. The British military was poorly run, with corruption and incompetence evident. Most shocking was the deplorable state of the military hospitals. To say they were miserable, depraved, and indifferent to suffering was to understate the situation. With the public outcry that followed the reporting of the conditions under which injured and dying soldiers were treated, something had to be done. It was Florence Nightingale who intervened.

The Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert, and his wife were close personal friends of the Nightingales. They had met in Rome some years earlier. There was intense pressure on the government to do something about the deplorable conditions in the military hospitals, and Herbert turned to Florence. She gathered 38 of the best nurses she could find, and off they went.

Women in military settings in those days were unheard of. Military leaders and doctors regarded nurses as whores and derelicts, not exactly a welcoming environment. But Florence was persistent, and because of her upbringing and family status, she knew how the game was played. At first, the nurses were denied access to the hospital, but eventually, the conditions became so bad that out of desperation, she and her crew were permitted to work. And work they did. Florence was conscientious to see to it that the women under her direction strictly followed protocol. Anyone found to be of low moral character was quickly sent home. She and her nurses worked tirelessly under the most horrific of conditions. As in England, Florence used her administrative skills to see that things were run efficiently and productively. After some time, the conditions vastly improved.

In addition to raising the stature of the nursing profession, Ms. Nightingale was greatly responsible for introducing a concept and practice that we today find dogmatic but, in her time, was virtually unknown: sanitation. In the 1850s, the germ theory of disease was only a rumor and a very unpopular one at that. But Florence insisted on the essential practice of sanitary hospital care, such as clean linen, open windows to let air circulate more freely, changing bloody or soiled bandages, clean floors, and hand washing. Her reason for insisting on implementing these practices was flawed, as she felt disease was caused by “vapors” or “miasma.” Still, her application of statistical analysis based on her observations showed that patient outcomes vastly improved when proper hygiene was enforced. It led to the wide adoption of efforts toward sanitation decades before the association between bacteria and disease was firmly established.

Florence profoundly felt that her devotion to her work should not gain notoriety. A person entered nursing not for personal notice and certainly not for money. Nursing was a way of carrying out God’s love in a tangible way. So, it was incredibly ironic that things worked out the way they did. Russell’s reporting, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Santa Filomena, also known as the Lady With the Lamp), and a painting depicting her on her nightly rounds made her the most famous woman not only in England but around the world. She...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	18.12.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
ISBN-13	979-8-218-30231-3 / 9798218302313

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