Jennifer Lee Carrell - The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox

Category: Misc. Non-fiction, Mystery

Written by Jennifer Lee Carrell
Read by Michael Prichard
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps


The Speckled Monster
A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox
By: Jennifer Lee Carrell
Narrated by: Michael Prichard
Length: 19 hrs and 39 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 05-22-12
Language: English
Publisher: Random House Audio

Publisher’s Summary

The Speckled Monster is both a hair-raising tale of courage in the face of the deadliest disease that has ever struck mankind, and a gripping account of the birth of modern immunology. Jennifer Lee Carrell’s dramatic story follows two parents who, after barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, flouted 18th century European medical tradition by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. Their heroic struggles gave rise to immunology, as well as the vaccinations that remain our only hope should the disease be unleashed again. Carrell transports readers back to the early 18th century to tell the tales of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston: two iconoclastic figures who helped save London and Boston from this scourge.

©2003 Jennifer Lee Carrell (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews
“Highly engrossing…Carrell tells the gripping story with ardor and skill.” (Smithsonian)

“Written in a compelling, almost novelistic voice, Carrell details two eighteenth-century figures who struggled valiantly against smallpox. The disease becomes a character in the book, claiming the poor, the rich, and the royal without distinction.” (USA Today)