Get Well Soon

A humorous book about history’s worst plagues—from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio—and the heroes who fought themIn 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month, more than four hundred people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late nineteenth-century England, an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome—a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure. And in turn-of-the-century New York, an Irish cook caused two lethal outbreaks of typhoid fever in a case that earned her the moniker “Typhoid Mary” and eventually led to historic medical breakthroughs.Throughout history, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the plagues they’ve suffered. Get Well Soon delivers the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues in human history, as well as the stories of those heroic figures who fought to ease the suffering of the afflicted.With her signature mix of in-depth research and upbeat storytelling, and not a little dark humor, Jennifer Wright explores history’s most gripping and deadly outbreaks.