I Am Perhaps Dying

The Medical Backstory of Spinal Tuberculosis Hidden in the Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham

De: Dennis A. Rasbach MD FACS

Narrado por: Ben Collins

Invalid teenager Leroy Wiley Gresham left a seven-volume diary spanning the years of secession and the Civil War (1860-1865). He was just 12 when he began, and he died at 17, just weeks after the war ended. His remarkable account, recently published as The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865, edited by Janet E. Croon (2018), spans the gamut of life events that were of interest to a precocious and well-educated Southern teenager - including military, political, religious, social, and literary matters of the day. This alone ranks it as an important contribution to our understanding of life and times in the Old South. But it is much more than that. Chronic disease and suffering stalk the young writer, who is never told he is dying until just before his death.

Dr. Rasbach, a graduate of Johns Hopkins medical school and a practicing general surgeon with more than three decades of experience, was tasked with solving the mystery of LeRoy’s disease. Like a detective, Dr. Rasbach peels back the layers of mystery by carefully examining the medical-related entries. What were LeRoy’s symptoms? What medicines did doctors prescribe for him? What course did the disease take, month after month, year after year? The author ably explores these and other issues in I Am Perhaps Dying to conclude that the agent responsible for LeRoy’s suffering and demise turns out to be Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a tiny but lethal adversary of humanity since the beginning of recorded time.

In the second half of the 19th century, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accounting for one-third of all deaths. Even today, a quarter of the world’s population is infected with TB, and the disease remains one of the top 10 causes of death, claiming 1.7 million lives annually, mostly in poor and underdeveloped countries.

While the young man was detailing the decline and fall of the Old South, he was also chronicling his own horrific demise from spinal TB. These five years of detailed entries make LeRoy’s diary an exceedingly rare (and perhaps unique) account from a 19th-century TB patient. LeRoy’s diary offers an inside look at a fateful journey that robbed an energetic and likeable young man of his youth and life. I Am Perhaps Dying adds considerably to the medical literature by increasing our understanding of how tuberculosis attacked a young body over time, how it was treated in the middle 19th century, and the effectiveness of those treatments.

©2018 Dennis A. Rasbach (P)2018 Savas Beatie

For the medical/technical minded

This book was a little different than what I expected, but it truly is what is says, a book about the disease and the records of it that this young man left behind in his journal. Has lots of information concerning what the young man suffered, what his symptoms were and the treatments that were administered. Lot of information about this forgotten disease. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Redundant

This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author.
I have mixed feelings about this book. The information on how Tuberculosis was treated and the effectiveness of those treatments was interesting. I think it could have been completed in half the time.
Unfortunately, many things were repeated almost word for word. I am sure the diary has some interesting passages, but the only ones quoted were basically the same - about how his legs hurt and how he’s not improving. Several quotes were made at one point and it was the same thing over and over.
This book was about uncovering the cause of Leroy’s illness. As the doctor “peeled back the layers of the mystery” they also stated Leroy’s doctors knew all along what he was suffering from. No mystery then. To clarify or delve into , as they do, the various treatments is great, but to write as though they are diagnosing when he was already diagnosed, was for me, irritating.

This is the first book I have listened to by this narrator ( Ben Collins ) and I think he did a fine job narrating this content.

There are no explicit sex scenes, excessive violence or swearing.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.

Story 2.5/5
Narration 4/5

Oh! The Suffering.

This is the story of a young man who suffered terribly from an early age with a disease that was not well understood at the time. The attempts to cure the disease or simply to relieve the pain, generally always brought on more pain and suffering. Some of the "medicines and cures" used in that day and time border on comical, but it was anything but comical to the those enduring it. So sad. Thank God, modern medicine can alleviate so much of the suffering today. Else we might still be experiencing what young Leroy Gresham did.

Amazing read

Very powerful. At the age of 12 things like death seem like an after thought. Not so for LeRoy. At the age of 12 he knew something was wrong with him and he kept a diary up until then. Modern science has not gotten rid of Tuberculosis and it still vexes us today. To be 12 during the civil was and having to deal with that knowing the next day mgiht be his last. I'm shocked that someone was able to keep the motivation to write in his journal as he did.

Unexpected

When I purchased this book, I did not expect that it would be a daily recitation of two or three lines of the same medical complaints of the poor boy. I expected that he would describe his daily life experienced through a window and include much more history. It could have been a much better book.