Is that not one of the creepi­est pic­tures of an eye you’ve ever seen? It could be on the cover of a sci­ence fic­tion novel. Unfor­tu­nately, it belongs to a vic­tim of yel­low fever. I find the his­tory of med­i­cine fas­ci­nat­ing, throw in infor­ma­tion about Cuba and I was hooked by Suzanne Jurmain’s The Secret of the Yel­low Death: A True Story of Med­ical Sleuthing.

The Spanish-American War and the sub­se­quent increased con­tact between Cuba and the United States resulted in a com­mit­ment on the part of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to dis­cover the cause of yel­low fever. Dr. Wal­ter Reed was placed at the head of a group of 4 Amer­i­can sci­en­tists. Jur­main clearly out­lines Reed’s prac­ti­cal and thor­ough approach to the research despite the urgency of a cure and con­flict­ing opin­ions (and per­son­al­i­ties) among the sci­en­tists. The brav­ery of med­ical researchers and test sub­jects in the early nineteenth-century is some­thing that is easy to for­get. It is inter­est­ing to learn Wal­ter Reed’s role in devel­op­ing stan­dards for sci­en­tific exper­i­men­ta­tion. Jur­main fol­lows in his foot­steps by hon­or­ing the vol­un­teers by pro­vid­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about their live. While short on details about the research of the Cuban doc­tor, Car­los Fin­lay, full credit is given for his role in estab­lish­ing the con­nec­tion between mos­qui­toes and yel­low fever. In just 104 pages, Jur­main has writ­ten a com­pelling piece of med­ical his­tory that places it firmly in the con­text of other world events.

Today’s Non­fic­tion Mon­day round-up is hosted by Prac­ti­cally Par­adise.