Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama

There is a lot of material packed into this volume, and it is all good information, but for me, the message was a little muddled. I can agree that the health of a nation economically depends on the physical health of it's citizens, and therefore when pandemics inevitably happen, the powers that be are looking for someone to blame at least as much as they are seeking solutions. That happened with COVID and it has happened repeatedly through history. The 18th-century development of vaccination was spurred by the mutation of smallpox into a potentially fatal virus. The English discovery that a small dose of the pus from someone with active disease worked as a shield against full-blown infection. Meanwhile, inoculation by insufflation—blowing dried, powdered pus up the nostrils—was state policy in China. The Victorian age of globalization showed that disease moved as easily as goods through steamship and rail. The need for international coordination was obvious, but rivalrous powers resisted restrictions. So was born both vaccination and the skeptics who questioned it's utility and safety. The author goes on to tell the saga of cholera, and with it, all the prejudices that were fanned across the globe.