Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The book is beautifully written, first of all. Dr. Pelis is able to do for medical biography what few others are able to and that is contextualize the person she's writing about not just in his own time and place but in his intellectual field as well (and the book contains an excellent history of the field of disease research to boot). The book can be read by anyone, not just specialists in the history of medicine - it holds something for doctors, anthropologists, various kinds of historians, as well as the well-read layperson. The book is not bogged down in technical jargon, but it was clearly written by a scholar who knows her literature as well as her history. Pelis really does justice to this complex character and gives more than just the tired old "brilliant but tortured man" trope. Nicolle's letters really allow Pelis to bring him to life and despite his personal flaws, one comes away from the book in awe of and with respect for the man who did so much for the world, yet still felt he was a failure in the end.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Charles Nicolle, Pasteur's Imperial Missionary: Typhus and Tunisia (Rochester Studies in Medical History)
This book examines the biomedical research of Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist Charles Nicolle during his tenure as director of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. Using typhus as its lens, it demonstrates how the complexities of early twentieth century bacteriology, French imperial ideology, the "Pastorian mission," and conditions in colonial Tunisia, blended to inform the triumphs and disappointments of Nicolle's fascinating career. It illuminates how these diverse elements shaped Nicolle's personal identity, the identity of his institute, and his innovative conception of the "birth, life, and death" -- or, the emergence and eradication -- of infectious disease.Kim Pelis blends exhaustive archival research with a close reading of Nicolle's written work -- scientific papers, philosophical treatises, and literary contributions -- to explore the complex relations between biomedical ideas and sociocultural context. The result is a study that will be of interest not only to students of French history, colonial medicine, or the history of the biomedical sciences, but also to anyone seeking to understand how individuals have attempted to deal creatively with complex times and ambiguous knowledge.Kim Pelis received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Institute. She has taught at the University of Iowa, the Uniformed Services University, and the University of Notre Dame.
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