Review of The Autumn Ghost

[chris_gerrib]

The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care by Hannah Wunsch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm a Rotarian, and this book was mentioned in an issue of our international association. I bought it and read it last night. The author, Hannah Wunsch, is a doctor who specializes in critical care - what laymen would call the ICU. She was working at an ICU in New York City during COVID. This specialization greatly informs the book and the reader.

The core of the book is about a polio epidemic which hit Copenhagen, Denmark in the fall of 1952. At the height of the epidemic, the main hospital in the city was getting around 200 new patients a day. Polio in 1952 was not well understood, but in the US, it was known that a primary cause of death was the patient becoming unable to breathe. This was "fixed" (somewhat) by putting them in an iron lung. There was one (1) iron lung in Denmark in 1952.

A group of Danish doctors, led by an anesthesiologist (which was not a specialty at the time) developed on the fly a way to breathe for patients with inflatable bags. This required hundreds of people to manually squeeze these bags so medical, dental and nursing students were pressed into service. It was crude but it worked, and directly led to the development of the modern ICU.

I found the story very moving and gripping. The doctors involved did not think of themselves as heroes but they were. The author also makes a great case for vaccines - a very timely thing.



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