History of Medicine and the Body Research Papers (original) (raw)

This book looks at the impact of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, the greatest flu the world has ever known, on Irish society and politics, at a time when that society was going through the trauma of the war and the rapid move towards independence. The book also looks at contemporary medical understanding of the disease, and how it punctured the new-found confidence of the medical profession in bacteriology, as how they failed to find an effective treatment. Most poignantly, it looks at the patient experience of disease, through a series of oral history interviews, seeing how families sometimes lost several members, and economic circumstances were often changed by the loss of one or both parents. It tells the story of small children who survived against the odds, and lived well into their nineties or hundreds to tell the tale. The story of the pandemic in Ireland interweaves with the other contemporary significant events in Irish society, and its impact on these events has curiously been largely ignored. Throughout, the work sets the Irish experience of the pandemic in an international context. Review of Stacking the Coffins here: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526122698/

One hundred years after the influenza pandemic of 1918, scholars continue to assess the medical history, public health response, and social impact of the disease. Milne (Maynooth Univ., Belfast), however, is the first to publish a full-length treatise of the 1918 influenza in Ireland, examining the ways the illness politically affected Ireland's move toward independence; influenced public health decisions and delivery; and radically altered the lives of individual Irish people, still reeling under the trauma of the First World War. Based on Milne's 2009 doctoral dissertation, this text demonstrates an admirable and comprehensive understanding of previous work on the epidemic, including Alfred Crosby's benchmark study America's Forgotten Pandemic (2nd. ed., 2003); Niall Johnson's Britain and the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic (2006); and Jeffery Taubenberger's genetic research of the virus (included in the anthology The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19, edited by Howard Phillips and David Killingray, 2003). Milne also adeptly handles novel primary research, including a close study of contemporary Irish newspapers and oral history interviews with survivors and family members of victims.'
D. A. Henningfeld, emerita, Adrian College, Choice
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers

'Milne brilliantly reports on interviews she has done with survivors or with the families of people who died in the pandemic. Her material, collected in 2006 is unique, and gives an understanding of the contemporary suffering and long-lasting pain associated with bereavement that cold statistics cannot give.'
Professor Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Oslo Metropolitan University

'Stacking the coffins is a superb new book on how this influenza affected Ireland. [.] I cannot recommend it enough.'
Dr Maurice Gueret, Editor of the Irish Medical Directory

'The Irish part of the disease's global history has long been overlooked, as have the experiences of the families and communities it afflicted. By telling their stories, Milne's thorough book makes an important contribution to our social and medical history.'
Christopher Kissane, The Irish Times

'Stacking the Coffins is an excellent and very accessible study of a crisis that can be overshadowed in hindsight by the drama of war and political upheaval, but which had a profound impact on those who lived through it. By taking a genuinely holistic approach, it illuminates much besides its subject matter. It is a study of a society in the grip of a crisis and, as such, offers a significant and distinctive contribution co an understanding of Irish life in a period usually defined by its revolution.'
John Gibney, Books Ireland, November 2018
'Long in the making, this is the definitive study of a major but largely neglected disaster that ravaged Ireland a century ago. Milne tells the story with empathy, objectivity, and flair. She is thorough and convincing on the Great Flu's peculiar demography and on its chronology and geography, and excellent also on how officialdom tried to cope with the crisis and on how the politics of the day influenced the discourse around it. A real highlight is the chapter on the oral history of the Flu, which includes interviews with a few centenarians! A very fine book on an important topic.'
Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Ireland: A New Economic History and Famine: A Short History

'"Take regular meals to keep the body in peak condition, and if you get home wet or late take a hot glass of lemonade immediately. Inhale eucalyptus from a piece of cotton wool several times a day. Go to bed immediately if you get the flu." Such was the medical advice in the midst of the 1918 influenza epidemic, Ida Milne reports, which would have provided little solace in the face of the worst holocaust of disease in modern times. Milne has produced a fascinating account, based on meticulous and wide-ranging research, including oral histories, of responses to this epidemic in Ireland. The chapter dealing with oral histories is particularly poignant and priceless. In this book, Milne explores the ways in which the epidemic penetrated and impacted on all aspects of Irish society, at a time when the country was going through rapid and sometimes traumatic societal and political changes. The book makes an important contribution to the modern social history of health and medicine and to the history of Ireland in the twentieth century. Throughout she ponders: "why was a disease that dominated the columns of newspapers, was so immersed in the popular psyche, connected to the growing nationalism, a disease which was part of a big international story, left out of Irish historiography for almost 100 years?" Milne admirably remedies that omission.'
Professor Linda Bryder, University of Auckland

'Stacking the Coffins is an important new addition to the social history of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Milne carefully uncovers the ways in which influenza heated a bubbling stew of war, politics, and a failing medical system in Ireland. Stories of suffering told by survivors bring human voices and experiences to the cold count of 20,000 Irish dead. The survivors' vivid memories, and Milne's meticulous mining of archival sources, reveal a forgotten crisis that ruptured families and played a role in reconfiguring twentieth-century Irish society.'
Ann Herring, Professor Emerita, McMaster University

'The first-hand memories of over 25 people who lived through Ireland's "Black Flu" alone make this book moving, dramatic and engrossing reading.'
Howard Phillips, University of Cape Town, author of 'Black October': The Impact of the Spanish Flu Epidemic on South Africa