John Brooke’s new book, Understanding Epidemics, was recently reviewed by Elizabeth Murphy. She emphasizes how John Brooke has brilliantly jotted down the origin, causes and effects of numerous plagues throughout the history of the world.

Understanding Epidemics is a genuinely written guidebook and a historian simultaneously. It narrates in non-technical terms the advent, outbreak, origin, causes, effects and countermeasures of several pandemics, plagues and epidemics in the past. The book relates how humans co-exist with many viruses, bacteria and micro-organisms in nature. These viruses or bacteria rely upon humans as their hosts. Where it’s a beneficial relationship in many instances, for some exceptions, this co-existence can turn aggressive, leading to devastating consequences for human health. The origin of many notorious plagues of the past is put together chronologically in this book. How they had been combated with, controlled and erased through various vaccines is also entailed. A must-read for pharmacists and historians.

John Brooke, born in 1942, was a promising student at Magdalen College School, Oxford. He excelled in subjects of theatre and music. He was the school organist too. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University and passed with flying colors, earning an honours degree in Pharmacology. He has worked in the field of medicine for half a century. He has extensive knowledge of pharmacy. He has narrated how over-population, rapidly changing environment, floods, droughts, and chemical amalgamation in the food industry have led to outbreaks of devastating epidemics throughout the history of mankind and suggests practical steps in controlling them.