Placebos don’t shrink tumors: Marchant, Cure, 22.
CHAPTER 20: WHEN THINGS GO WRONG: DISEASES
In the autumn of 1948, people in the small city: “The Post-viral Syndrome: A Review,” Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, May 1987; “A Disease Epidemic in Iceland Simulating Poliomyelitis,” American Journal of Epidemiology 2 (1950); “Early Outbreaks of ‘Epidemic Neuromyasthenia,’ ” Postgraduate Medical Journal, Nov. 1978; Annals of Medicine, New Yorker, Nov. 27, 1965.
in 1970, after several years of quiescence: “Epidemic Neuromyasthenia: A Syndrome or a Disease?,” Journal of the American Medical Association, March 13, 1972.
West Nile virus surfaced in New York: Crawford, Deadly Companions, 18.
Two hundred years later, a very similar illness: “Two Spots and a Bubo,” London Review of Books, April 21, 2005.
Bourbon virus, as it became known: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, May 2015; “Researchers Reveal That Killer ‘Bourbon Virus’ Is of the Rare Thogotovirus Genus,” Science Times, Feb. 22, 2015; “Mysterious Virus That Killed a Farmer in Kansas Is Identified,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2014.
“Unless doctors are doing laboratory tests”: “Deadly Heartland Virus Is Much More Common Than Scientists Thought,” National Public Radio, Sept. 16, 2015.
Within a few days, 34 were dead: “In Philadelphia 30 Years Ago, an Eruption of Illness and Fear,” New York Times, Aug. 1, 2006.
Legionella is widely distributed in soil: “Coping with Legionella,” Public Health, Nov. 14, 2000.
Much the same thing happened: “Early Outbreaks of ‘Epidemic Neuromyasthenia.’ ”
Whether or not a disease becomes epidemic: New Scientist, May 9, 2015, 30–33.
A successful virus is one: “Ebola Wars,” New Yorker, Oct. 27, 2014.
the number of viruses in birds and mammals: “The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?,” Atlantic, July—Aug. 2018.
“a catastrophe from which we”: “Stone Soup,” New Yorker, July 28, 2014.
a shadowy cook and housekeeper: Grove, Tapeworms, Lice, and Prions, 334–35; New Yorker, Jan. 26, 1935; American National Biography, s.v. “Mallon, Mary.”
The United States has an estimated 5,750 cases each year: CDC figures.
The death toll in the twentieth century: “The Awful Diseases on the Way,” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016.
enough to infect seventeen others: “Bugs Without Borders,” New York Review of Books, Jan. 16, 2003.
In 2014, someone looking through a storage area: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Media Statement on Newly Discovered Smallpox Specimens,” July 8, 2014.
Inmates were given pickaxes: “Phrenic Crush,” London Review of Books, Oct. 2003.
she and other inmates were allowed visits: MacDonald, Plague and I, 45.
Some boroughs of London now have rates: “Killer of the Poor Now Threatens the Wealthy,” Financial Times, March 24, 2014.
The only treatment, even now: Economist, April 22, 2017, 54.
Bilharz bandaged the pupae of cercariae worms: Kaplan, What’s Eating You?, ix.
a protein called huntingtin: Mukherjee, Gene, 280–86.
At least forty have been linked to type 2 diabetes: Nature, May 17, 2012, S10.
“Why a temperate climate”: Bainbridge, Beyond the Zonules of Zinn, 77–78.
Only about two hundred cases of the disorder: Davies, Life Unfolding, 197.
For 90 percent of rare diseases: MIT Technology Review, Nov.—Dec. 2018, 44.
“You are most likely going to die”: Lieberman, Story of the Human Body, 351.
only 36 percent less likely to get flu: “The Ghost of Influenza Past and the Hunt for a Universal Vaccine,” Nature, Aug. 8, 2018.
CHAPTER 21: WHEN THINGS GO VERY WRONG: CANCER
Diphtheria, smallpox, and tuberculosis: Bourke, Fear, 298–99.
“The early history of cancer”: Mukherjee, Emperor of All Maladies, 44–45.
Half of men over sixty: Welch, Less Medicine, More Health, 71.
A survey of physicians in America: “What to Tell Cancer Patients,” Journal of the American Medical Association 175, no. 13 (1961).
Surveys in Britain at about the same time: Smith, Body, 330.
“That’s why cancers aren’t contagious”: Interview with Dr. Josef Vormoor, Princess Máxima Center, Utrecht, the Netherlands, Jan. 18–19, 2019.
Between birth and the age of forty: Herold, Stem Cell Wars, 10.
More than half of cases: Nature, March 24, 2011, S16.
How exactly weight tips the balance: “The Fat Advantage,” Nature, Sept. 15, 2016; “The Link Between Cancer and Obesity,” Lancet, Oct. 14, 2017.
The first person to notice a connection: British Journal of Industrial Medicine, Jan. 1957, 68–70; “Percivall Pott, Chimney Sweeps, and Cancer,” Education in Chemistry, March 11, 2006.
More than eighty thousand chemicals: “Toxicology for the 21st Century,” Nature, July 8, 2009.
Although no one can say to what extent: “Cancer Prevention,” Nature, March 24, 2011, S22—S23.
In the face of opposition: Armstrong, Gene That Cracked the Cancer Code, 53, 27–29.
Altogether, it has been estimated, pathogens: “The Awful Diseases on the Way,” New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016.
About 10 percent of men: Timmermann, History of Lung Cancer, 6–7.
There is some evidence that his wife: Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Jan. 2012.
the concept of the radical mastectomy: American National Biography, s.v. “Halsted, William Stewart”; “A Very Wide and Deep Dissection,” New York Review of Books, Sept. 20, 2001; Beckhard and Crane, Cancer, Cocaine, and Courage, 111–12.
He lost most of his jaw and parts of his skull: Jorgensen, Strange Glow, 94.
In 1920, four million radium watches: Ibid., 87–88.
“he was so badly disfigured”: Ibid., 123.
Mrs. Lawrence’s cancer went into remission: Goodman, McElligott, and Marks, Useful Bodies, 81–82.