The Deadly Truth: A history of disease in America by Gerald Grob, Harvard University Press, $35/£22.63, ISBN 0674008812
WESTERNERS, and especially Americans, are rattled about infection these days. We thought we had the old killers, such as smallpox and tuberculosis, beat – and now it seems we don’t. New ones, from anthrax attacks to mad cows, keep taking us by surprise.
Some people are scared silly. Very silly. When West Nile virus was recently found in Florida alligators, a reporter asked a health official whether you could catch it from an alligator bite. He was drily reminded that being bitten…
