Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction. Her YA novels include Control, Catalyst, and the upcoming The November Girl. Her adult fiction debut is entitled A Beautiful Poison. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

This author is represented by the Hachette Speakers Bureau.

Nate Pedersen is a librarian, historian, and freelance journalist with over 400 publications in print and online, including in the Guardian, the Believer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Art of Manliness.

PATIENT ZERO: A Curious History of the World's Most Deadly Diseases

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: INFECTION
Patient Zero: Ergotism
Zoonoses: Making the Leap
Patient Zero: Ebola
Germ Theory: From Miasma to Microscopes
Patient Zero: Plague
Autopsy: From Humoral Theory to Grave Robbing
Patient Zero: Hep C
Anatomy of an Outbreak
Patient Zero: Covid-19
Quackery Cures
Patient Zero: Yellow Fever
Patient Zero: Mad Cow Disease


Part II: SPREAD
Patient Zero: HIV
Patient Zero: Typhus
Leprosy
Patient Zero: Typhoid Mary
Indigenous Peoples & the Columbian Exchange: The "Exchange" Was Not Equal
Patient Zero: Syphilis
Crypto Outbreak
Patient Zero: Measles


Part 3: CONTAINMENT
Patient Zero: 1918 Influenza
Vaccines: From Variolation to Messenger RNA
Patient Zero: Polio
Cancer-Disease Link
Patient Zero: Cholera
Anthrax & Biological Warfare: The Weaponization of Disease
Patient Zero: Rabies
Tuberculosis
Patient Zero: Last Smallpox case
Medical Advancements


Acknowledgments
Index
Credits
About the Authors