Foreign Bodies

Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations

By: Simon Schama

Narrated by: Simon Schama

Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon Schama

Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.

Characteristically, Schama’s message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces, and slums – are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.

At the heart of it all is an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine, a gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as “the saviour of mankind” for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world’s first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.

Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, “there are no foreigners, only familiars.”

©2023 Simon Schama (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Simon Schama's historical authority--demonstrated by his confident vocal performance--foregrounds his account of humanity's ongoing fight to protect itself against deadly disease. Schama takes listeners on a journey from inoculation to vaccination, starting with the battle against smallpox, moving through cholera and tuberculosis research, and ultimately landing on recent developments around COVID-19.... His performance underscores the prejudice, particularly anti-Asian discrimination and anti-Semitism, that has run rampant in epidemiological endeavors throughout time. As it turns out, Schama reveals, medical innovation in fighting disease and infection isn't about the health of humans at all. It's about the political health--and power--of nations themselves." (AudioFile)

Good & Interesting Discourse

Schama went through history and challenges of inoculations and vaccines focusing on smallpox, cholera and plague. Very good research and story around major figures. I certainly learned a lot of details I did not know, and I am familiar with this field. Good read in the time of COVID and beyond.

Mostly irrelevant narrative

A very disappointing book. Most of the narrative has nothing to do with the supposed topic.

Great Disappointment

Slow moving, Author concentrated on one character way too long. Slavery seemed to be in the background.

vaccine , what vaccine??

Too many irrelevant segues. I actually wanted to learn about vaccines not Marcel Proust's family