Touching Distance (eBook)

Rebecca Abrams (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012 | 1. Auflage
416 Seiten
Pan Macmillan (Verlag)
978-0-230-73809-6 (ISBN)

Infos

It is 1790. After ten years?! training in the great medical schools of Europe, Alec Gordon has returned to Scotland to take up the post of Physician to the Aberdeen Dispensary. Alec has ambitious plans for modernizing medical practice in the town, starting with the local midwives, whose ignorance and old-fashioned methods appal him. But Alec?"!s dreams of progress are thrown into disarray when a mysterious disease suddenly strikes the town, attacking and killing every newly delivered mother for miles around. Alec alone recognizes it as childbed fever, a disease more deadly than the plague, a condition that has baffled the greatest physicians of the age, an illness with no known cause and no known cure. Desperate to save his patients?"! lives, Alec sets out on an astonishing medical quest to conquer the disease. But while Alec struggles to find solutions that lie far in the future, his wife Elizabeth is increasingly lost in the past, prey to terrifying memories of her childhood in Antigua. As she knows and he will learn, some diseases lie beyond the reach of reason. Based on a true story, Touching Distance is a stunning historical novel that brings to life a fascinating period in world history, exploring the tragic limitations of knowledge and the deep-seated tension between reason and passion in the Age of Enlightenment. 'Beautifully worked. It is a book about the shockingly intimate, but it has an epic feel.?"! Hilary Mantel"

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'Atmospheric and fascinating' - Hilary Mantel Shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize and winner of the Medical Journalists' - Association Open Book AwardIn the winter of 1790, a mysterious and deadly disease strikes the unsuspecting town of Aberdeen. The victims are all women in the prime of life. Determined to save his patients, talented young physician Alec Gordon embarks on an astonishing medical quest. What he discovers will shake the small, close-knit community to the core and change his own life - and that of his wife and young daughter - forever.Based on the true story of Alexander Gordon, the first person to discover that infectious diseases were transmitted by human contact, Touching Distance is a stunning historical novel set in Scotland and the West Indies in the Age of Enlightenment. It centres on a deadly epidemic without a cure, history's very first 'track and trace', and Gordon's desperate attempts to make people understand the vital importance of hand-washing and social-distancing, over a century before they were scientifically proven. A vivid portrait of a pivotal moment in world history, it is also a universal tale of intimacy and estrangement, reason and passion, corruption and courage. The novel's key themes include medical whistle-blowers, doctors and midwives on the frontline of a deadly disease, the battle between scientific truth and political self-interest, Britain's deep links with colonialism and slavery, the dangerous intersection of racism and sexism, and the impact of epidemics on women. Touching Distance by Rebecca Abrams is a novel that speaks powerfully to crucial issues we are still grappling with today.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.5.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Gesundheitsfachberufe ► Hebamme / Entbindungspfleger
• ISBN-10: 0-230-73809-5 / 0230738095
• ISBN-13: 978-0-230-73809-6 / 9780230738096