Legionellosis 1985 & Anatomy of an Epidemic 1982
Legionellosis
Sheila Moriber Katz, MD (Editor). 1985.
CRC Press, Inc. Boca Raton, Florida.
Volume I.
Part I: History of Legionellosis.
Chapter 1. Isolation of a New Microbe. Sheila M. Katz. 3.
Chapter 2. Prior Outbreaks of Legionellosis. Robert G. Sharrar. 11.
Part II: The Microbe.
Chapter 3. Taxonomy of the Family Legionellaceae. Don J. Brenner. 21.
Chapter 4. Morphology of Legionella. Frank G. Rodgers. 39.
Chapter 5. Biochemistry and Physiology of Legionella. Richard D. Miller and Jay M. Hammel. 83.
Part III: The Illness.
Chapter 6. Clinical Features of Legionnaires Disease. Charles C. Bailey, Patricia R. Murray, and Sydney M. Finegold. 111.
Chapter 7. Clinical Features of Disease due to Legionella Species. John N. Dowling. 151.
Chapter 8. The Pathology of Legionellosis.:
Pulmonary Pathology. Jeffrey D. Goldstein. 161.
Extra-pulmonary Pathology of Legionnaire’s Disease. Shahab Hashemi. 181.
Visualization of Legionella Pneumophila in Exudates and Tissues by Histochemical Techniques. Sheila M. Katz. 189.
Chapter 9. Therapy of Legionellosis. Charles C. Bailey, Patricia R. Murray, and Sydney M. Finegold. 193.
Index. 209.
Volume II.
Part I: Laboratory Diagnosis of Legionellosis.
Chapter l. Diagnosis: Culture. James C. Feeley. 3.
Chapter 2. Diagnosis: Serology. Hazel W. Wilkenson. 11.
Chapter 3. Diagnosis: Direct Fluorescent Antibody Test. Rodger M. McKinney.23.
Chapter 4. Diagnosis: New Concepts. Richard W. Gilpin. 35.
I was involved with Legionella research at my Philadelphia medical school lab soon after the 1976 outbreak and authored Chapter 4.
Part II: Epidemiology of Legionellosis.
Chapter 5. Legionellosis: Epidemiology. Ellen J. Mangione and Claire V. Broome. 59.
Chapter 6. Ecological Niche of Legionella pneumophila. Carl B. Fliermans. 73.
Part III: Pathobiology of Legionellosis.
Chapter 7. Animal Models of Legionellosis. Sheila M. Katz and Joseph P. Matus.119.
Chapter 8. Tissue Culture Systems. Charles E. Benson.133.
Chapter 9. Host Resistance to Legionella pneumophila: Interactions of L. pneumophila with Leukocytes. Marcus A. Horwitz. 143.
Chapter 10. Immunity to Legionella. Toby K. Eisenstein and Herman Friedman. 159.
Part IV: The New Microbe: Commentary.
Chapter 11. The Discovery of Hepatitis B Virus: One Prototype for Discovery of New Microbes. Baruch S. Blumberg. 173.
Chapter 12. Microbial Parallels to the Pathogenesis of Legionnaires Disease. Burton J. Landau and Amedeo Bondi. 177.
Appendix: Chronicle, Philadelphia, 1976. Donald Drake. 183.
Index. 199.
Anatomy of an Epidemic: The True Story of a Town, a Hotel, a Silent Killer, and a Medical Detection Team.
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. 1982.
Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York.
Book cover description: [Out of Print – Dr Katz and some authors listed above are described in this book]
The story makes front-page headlines across the nation: a deadly killer is on the loose … and suspected to be lurking in the halls of a once-grand hotel. For months people live in fear, waiting for the killer to be identified . . . and stopped.
The scenario reads like the plot of a mystery novel. But in fact ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC is the true story of the greatest medical mystery of the century: legionnaires’ disease.
August 1976: In the midst of the nation’s bicentennial euphoria, America is suddenly plunged into a nightmare of fear and paranoia by reports of a mysterious fatal disease traced to the elegant Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. Its symptoms are similar to many known diseases, but every lab test comes up negative, no clear epidemiological pattern emerges, and mortality rates climb toward 20 percent.
After months of painstaking investigation, the killer is finally identified as a previously unknown strain of bacteria and named Legionella pneumophilia. But today it still continues to kill in places around the world… and no one yet knows how to stop it.
Here is the whole suspenseful story of legionnaires’ disease, told by prize winning social historians Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, authors of the best sellers The Day the Bubble Burst and Voyage of the Damned.
ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC is a story of courage, skill, and dedication, of the tireless medical detectives who worked around the clock – and often risked their lives – to solve this deadly puzzle. Even scientists working in laboratories said to be germ proof were not safe, for these new “microbe hunters” found themselves locked in relentless battle with a real-life “Andromeda strain.” It’s a revealing dissection of the medical rivalries, political controversies, and media hype that haunted the investigation at every step. It’s a story of faded glory and fierce loyalty inside the Bellevue Stratford, which itself became a casualty of legionnaires’ disease. And it’s a personal story of the tragedy suffered by legionnaires and their families in a small town in Pennsylvania. But ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC is also a devastating portrait of paranoia-ridden America, where bizarre theories of conspiracy and germ warfare seemed frighteningly plausible – and where the technologies that ensure our comfort may also have created insidious new killers among us.