Transcripts For CSPAN3 Simon 20240705

We kind of run out of time, but i just want to thank you so much for kind of sharing wisdom. And, you know, the book is called you will own nothing. Its fantastic. Its available at amazon was i think its still on New York Times list. So please go buy it. It is worth your time and thank you everyone for for listening in. We really appreciate it. And wish everyone a goodim gla. Im the executive director of the Temple Emanuel stryker centers and. Im thrilled to welcome you to an evening with a man Whose Research brought to life centuries of jewish history in books and documentary films, jewish hastily, he wrote. Turns out not to be an either or story as in either pure. Judys detached surroundings or else a simulation, but rather for the vast majority. The adventures of living in between. I loved it quote. I actually think it describes tycho so because it is like a santa we celebrated leaving and living in between through the books we love the politics we debate theyre performances we enjoy and the individual who inspires us for saw for all you inbetweens, please join us next tuesday to celebrate truly inspiring woman sheila the first female African American billionaire who will be in a conversation with gayle king. And later in the judy collins will return for another concert. Mandy patinkin will discuss Albert Einstein in the refugee refugee question. David brooks, Rachel Maddow are joined by and also two to name a few i you will join us again and often but tonight guess but now for tonights guest who is returning to the striker center stage for the third time sir, simon schama. I think those books about the french revolution they were all charles and zionism is laughing though im not sure why dutch history and the relationship between landscape memory for the bbc produced history of britain and a tv show about britains slavery and american revolution. And that doesnt begin to cover incredible output, which includes musings on the boston working red sox. Obama and american food. He stood at complete cambridge, oxford and harvard, now columbia. And in 2001 was awarded the commander of order of the British Empire by queen elizabeth. Hence this is why the sale appears before his name tonight. He joins us to offer a chilling reminder that worlds class mishandling of covid pandemic is hardly unique in Human History is new in us book for in bodies, it copied each you will get tonight also can be signed following the event outside in the lobby is filled with stories of how greed and politics have overwhelmed science. He will be in conversation with one of new yorks most eloquent leaders, adam gopnik, author of nine books, including the New York Times best seller paris to the moon. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for joining us and please welcome sales simon schama and adam gopnik. People still pouring in. I know this, simon, from on this strange day of wall street. So thank you so much for coming. Do you are you aware is schama you and i have known each other now for precisely 40 years. We first met. I was when we met actually, but actually we met you at the offices of kinnock, the publishers, when i was an extremely inefficient young editor. And youre, i think your first book, the Carol Janeway bless your memory, had brought your dutch book embarrassment of riches and said this is the most young man in all of britain and had your book. And i said that and then i read the book and it was and it was thank you it was dazzling it was your first book was it not . No, it was it was my third. The first one was also a book about dutch history of even by my standards, incredibly ponderous. Over written about the dutch during the period of the french revolution and and although people were quite nice about it. And the second one was a book called two rothschild. So they said and the land of israel. And it was based on archives that the rest of our family owned. Its actually a little worthwhile. And give me a little story i was doing a seminar when you Cambridge University in the seventies. There was no way you do modern jewish history absolute. No way that if you were doing religion, you couldnt do it. If you doing history couldnt do it or religion. It was comically known or shouldnt say that it was known as moral science. Its really a fabulous, not an oxymoron, exactly, but a surprise. So nicholas delonge, who other things was among sources and, is both an associate translator. We ran a kind of informal seminar at work, got round to the brilliant but extremely scary figure who was. Rothschild . Did you ever know him . I dont know if. Yeah. And so he said, come, you know, would you like to have a talk . And he wanted me to go and look at this archive which was sitting in a sort of a un office in a slightly seedy part of and i said, well, im no particular expert on this, on your papers. And he said it sort heralding a refrain which we now have to our costs. Weve had enough of experts so he pulled out he said would you like you can see it now it was november something it was raining it was kind of a terrible needle, sharp raindrops in cambridge. And i said well and i think i would end it so he pulled out an Airline Ticket at that point actually and said ive taken liberty of booking you tomorrow so i went efficiency we had a stormy relationship all this again digression what a shock for me building up to the moment the manuscript was sort of always a bit late one point he would go from yeah sort of wine lubricates it to gangster rage really with nothing between and he pounded his fist on the table says simon. You remember what our family motto is . And i remember them, and im not sure i remember now. And he said, service and buy, get it, you know, not give it, but we get it. So was that was a third was the first one the first big one in america at least and it was and it was it was memorable. Ill never forget reading it for the first time as i never forget reading your new one foreign bodies for the fifth time as i as i as i leap through it. Thats me. Its an extraordinary its an extraordinary book. And and and amazing accomplishment. Before we talk about this particular and id love to talk particularly simon some of the people in this book because its a beautifully people book its though its about a not abstract but about a specific its a history of medicine in a certain way. But its its beautifully populated. But i wanted to ask you, ive always wanted to ask you this. How do you go about writing a book like this . Because whats extraordinary about this book, like all of your work, is that it is who was it was it mcauley . They said his omniscience was his foible. Well, since this is your foible in that way too, you seem know so much, and yet its always passed through a prism of your beautifully digressive and ironic. How does one assemble a book like this . Well, i just have, you know. Good question. And it from book to book, i mean which is sort of a slightly dull way of answering your good question. I mean, this one was staggering only happenstance, really. I mean, the only other book that was really happenstance in the same and i wouldnt spend all our time talking about other books was, rough crossings, which really was most affected by the fact that i found in New York Historical site. Its extraordinary of this young 27 year old naval officer whod taken exslaves whod fought for the british first in nova scotia. And so i was just utterly captivated by the physical object. They wanted to show me the microfilm, the physical object of the sea splash diary in this case, really, i was writing a book fully expected by my publishers called return the tribes, which is likely i know later, but it title now. Come to think of what it was about the culture of nationalism, and by which i mean debris, invention of music and glinka and sibelius and so on, as well as painting and and i was getting more and more depressed once the pandemic arrived and i thought, you know, one moment, really, surely when national selfinterest probably gave way will definitely play selfevidently gave way to the sense in which were all in it together. Would have been the founding of the w. H. O. , World Health Organization in francisco in 1948. Interestingly this was going to be a chapter and didnt make it. Founded by a chinese diplomat. Diplomat in the last years of chinese republic and a norwegian diplomat. That itself is an amazing story and i went to the online archive. We were all stuck to it, but very grateful for the enormous of archival material you can get online and discovered this extraordinary institution called the with the not very appealing title of the the International Sanitary conference which was the First International organization that was put together not to deal with matters, war and peace in 1951, but to against cholera. And i was very interested in a surprise by that and that led me and i think we can without dwelling too much, ive got to make sure. Yeah oh yes, this was b typical alex. I was so to alex like that moment when am i doing it wrong. Okay, we may not have the slides that i know i want to do one before. There we go. Right. Him, this is andrew and this is what his father actually on purpose turned out to be great mover and shaker in the battle to try and contain cholera principally with the system of quarantines. British didnt like it because it interrupted trade between india and britain. But i thought to myself all sorts of little and i still wasnt. It wasnt yet a book. It was it was sort of an undergraduate curious city, really. And i thought, well, this is, you know, the father, the greatest hypochondriac in the history. And i always sort of him, i knew that he was a doctor, but i had idea about this extraordinary career nor the kind of journeys that hed made into the hottest at the hot sands cholera and his conviction, which was intuitively brilliant, really that the more modern we become in of shorten distances communication whether by train or steamship, the more likely it was that toxins would hit or hitch a ride. Yes. And then i then it started to flow from that from. Yeah. That was the chapter wrote first times that specificity was one of the ones i wanted to discuss with you and its if i may, so im typical of your method that you would begin with a person and proceed to a pandemic. So to speak. And. Yes, exactly. But lets since why dont we just jump in there . Because one of the things thats fascinating about proust as a character, and it is it is irresistable that this that this man whos represents it very obliquely in in his sons great novel as a sort slightly intimidating and remote figure had this passionate will towards benevolence towards improving the condition of mankind. Hes physically fearless as well. Yeah. I mean, theres one moment which i discovered actually late on in research by accident after id almost finished the first draft where he shows up in bombay as it was then mumbai i just as bubonic plague has returned to the city and i hadnt noticed that its a little page or two in one of his lengthy treatises. Yes. Well, one of the fascinating things im going struggle to articulate this is one of the things that moved me and excited me most in your book is its a kind of strange dialog between Public Health and the pathogenic series theory of disease, because one of the things that proust is all about is the necessity of quarantine, right . And its just, as you were saying, this was resisted very much in the same way as people have resisted in the context of the pandemic. Its bad for business, its unnecessary. Its its inhuman. Its certainly dictating to the population. But he recognize is that it was essential to prevent the spread of cholera. Yeah it helped that he was french in the sense that the british justified is to kind of cynical term but the british believed a better word that actually the whole of their occupy of the promising zones imperial commerce were free trade. So this sense you know which again resonates with of the rhetoric now. Yes the sense actually that the liberty of commerce and the, you know, morally imbued notion that you are not just in this for extortion and and loot and brutality so a lot the people who were arguing whether they were in public or whether they were in the government said it is wrong in so many ways actually to shut down trade. Yes. Whereas the pattern this tradition in france statements of exactly stated tradition which went all the way really back colberts absolute labor certainly went back more recently. The doctors and engineers who the french had sent after the napoleonic wars were over to egypt, mohammad alis egypt to a kind of scientific, cultural. So, you know, free trade for the french was not on kind of absolute value and proust could see that it was very important to stop it in the interest of in a not only containing a kind of horrifying contagion, but also properly restoring kind of economic division, we see we see to this day the other thing that, its a thematic in the book and very much involves is the idea that i was thinking about this that the pathogenic theory of disease is very counterintuitive in other words the idea that what makes us sick is not yet a miasma we put the next picture. Yes that i was going to she was there but. Can you see her actually lady can see its very, as i say, very counterintuitive for people to understand it isnt the general state of the world. It isnt vapors it isnt a miasma, rising river. Its these little foreign bodies that invade our own, that are the cause of disease. Its very you think its a crucial modern idea, but its very hard for people to accept. Yes. Well, there were two other wildly counterintuitive, you know, thoughts that are provoked by that. You know, understanding. One is that actually well, i mean, i suppose it amounts to one that you needed actually get this, you know that you would only be able to fight off the foreign bodies by the antibodies that are in, you know, your immune system. But that this woman this is the second counterintuitive thing, because clearly in the early 1700s, i tell you, is in the second in the 1700s, theres no no understanding, no knowledge that there is such a thing is immune system, no understanding. Of what antibodies might be there a hunch is that the body has sort of arsenal of internal weapons to contain the most virulent diseases. But then in those circumstances of microbiological complete to actually invite a toxin into your otherwise perfectly healthy body on the grounds that a mild attack smallpox, for example, is killing one in six people in the first decades of the 1700s is to kind ensure that you will not die of it presuppose the staggering leap of faith and this lady mary well it montagu whos the wife the British Ambassador in constantinople around 1715, 1760, and also and shes part of the circle of pope. And so, yes, i mean its very important that shes a literary celebrity. Shes been published not about poet. And, yes, Alexander Pope is unsurprisingly hopeless, only in love with. Yes and, but she knows john gay and, you know, people of that kind. And so this is very important terms of popov being four foot nine and hunchback. So he didnt have a didnt have much of a shot. Yes, thats right. She was had been a famous beauty. But shed suffered a horrifying attack. Smallpox herself in she had lost her brother her elder brother in 1715. She was a famous beauty in london at that time, and shed been very badly disfigured as you were lost to eyelashes, which sounds like a small thing, but not, of course. So awful thing. So when she went to turkey with her husband, noticed that and two daughters, right. Sorry. And her daughter said, well, no, it was born in when got back to london. She had a six year old son at edwards. She noticed that people not disfigured. You could also go from smallpox were you to survive . And she asks around, particularly as she asks women of sarala, as both of the sultan and the pashas. And they they say, well, this has been a custom for many generations that we we we take a small of pass. Theres no way to this particular toxic lily. And we and we appreciate and stop you know creates a kind of a collision an asian. Yes. In which so this and she sort takes it on faith to such an extent that she just that she will inoculate. This is 100 years before but jenna on a much safer process of cowpox vaccination so she decides she will inoculate little edward and. It works he gets a a mild fever very few pustules they fall off hes totally unmarked but when she goes back to london a couple of years later, she inoculates her daughter, three year old daughter, three, right . Oh, yeah. And shes friendly with them of wales, who becomes Queen Caroline to george the second. So becomes she throws herself into the public fray in this extraordinary way and she is immediately of course met with a of absolutely resistance and both on on general grounds what are you doing but also because this is from the ottomans and a third ground is that its woman and a mother and shes accused by one pamphleteer saying, oh, what kind of mother would deliberately invite into the healthy body her children. So you know, she she shes an extraordinary kind of campaigner in that respect and goes on being so in some senses, you know even though has not necessarily the breakthroughs dont happen in this of ethically personified way there are particular where you can absolutely see a particular individual makes a difference and she and she did and not only and the other thing that fascinated me about this story many things did is its such a cosmopolitan moment in words. Its a moment when intuitive eastern understanding of Health Practice makes its way to the west, to i think, actually, this is really again startled me almost. I think the receptiveness to actually taking as it were, epidemiological from the orient from the church back. Yes. In 100 years that follows its not only the key you know and others publish theres an extraordinary network i fell possibly excessively in love with. Im not very interested. And these are a group people, a lot of them scots and people from other parts of from england course, who are often commercial agents. Their extraordinary kind of, you know, augustan age. I mean, the collector and antiquarians and historians they speak many languages there in aleppo, algiers and smyrna and adrianople and india and they are all, you know, entirely open to what you can learn from cultures which are not western bacon in science. And what is even more remarkable is that the august fellows of the Royal Society in london listen to them publish these reports and this set about empirically demonstrating its true or not and gathering all this data gathering, all the data, i mean, it was very moving. Its obscure in halifax, in yorkshire, going round from door to door as if in a kind of improvise clinical trial, asking who had been inoculated against smallpox and who who hadnt, and figuring out whether it worked or so it speaks very well. The enlightenment, but its sort of backwards. You, as the central 18th century goes on, i think a couple of other people id love you to talk to us about a bit. Theres got to you might. Im pronouncing that correctly. Yeah. Extraordinary. Yes. Angela got yes, i was very won by him. Hes a tuscan. Hes a physician, a tuscan doctor. And he at a time in the middle of the 18th century, a middle of the 1700s now where italy is, as it were, under inoculated to cope with smallpox. And thereve been many attempts really to introduce inoculation into france. It was rather extraordinary. I mean, the books historical narrative begins with the violent attack of smallpox experienced by voltaire. Voltaire, because he goes to england, 17, 26, 28 and was already seen that the english thanks to lady mary and the princess of wales, taking inoculation very seriously. Voltaire then publishes in his letter on clay his philosophical essays, the first account of inoculation works, although its a kind of morally weird take. Exactly. Maybe i better explain that voltaire is full of admiration for women, sir. Women. Because they are inoculate their daughters. The reason why they inoculate the daughters vote says, is that their beauty should be unspoiled. So they could, in effect, be sold. Theyd be prime market value for the harems of turkey and far from seeing this as a kind of vile sort of sexual grooming voltaire thinks it makes perfect social and economic sense, both for the daughters and for the you know what is put me in mind of and this was a reference only that would have occurred probably only to you and i is the the dellacqua the figure of the circassian slave in the death of saigon helpless. This is totally unblemished. Exactly. Yeah. So little letter publishes this in english and but the french themselves are tremendously reluctant the the guild in effect of surgeons and physicians is hostile remains very hostile to inoculation. But the most radical thing feel as off health issue a son or daughter both of whom are atheists. Therefore they they they dont care at all gods being in the final arbiter who shall live and who shall die. He becomes a angela gottlieb, a sort of celebrity physician to radical philosophers in paris. Then suddenly it becomes very fashionable that certain hairstyle, which is meant to celebration, augurs well until until it doesnt, until suspicions are raised. Somebody somebody servant dies, not after being inoculated of. Theyre from inoculation. And he falls out of favor. But he writes these two extraordinary small books, which are really, really remarkable, and theyre kind of impassioned. Romance is really about the family, and particularly about the relationship between parents and mothers and children. The sin that angelo gatti commits in paris was by attacking physicians, doctors, i should say. And this it this is very important that actually most of those offer ing inoculation insists that the patient has to be fairly sound constitution to make sure that you didnt actually get a lethal dose and had to go through a regime lying in bed for a certain amount of days. A diet had to be very carefully controlled, maybe physical exercise, maybe not. And then you had another two or three weeks afterwards. Gotti is the little boy saying the emperor had no closing. It doesnt matter. But this and also you dont have to stick a needle deep into subcutaneous means subcutaneous. And he says in a one powerful center switch, which, you know, is so by his that the best people inoculate children are their mothers they can do in while while the child is sleeping. We still dont do at home to me so no reason why and forget about all this doctors have been making a fortune on prescribing, you know, crushed lamb. Pray bones and skeletal minds, kind of potions, really. So not only are those against inoculation in paris hate catchy but also the entirety of doctors who are in favor inoculation. Yes. Thats just as well. So he hes driven out of paris then spend source of his life in italy. I mean a of these breakthrough stories are about who are profoundly it actually in a way for their temerity. Yes one of the things that fascinated me about gotti is that exactly that the people who take after him in in paris, just as you said, orange, just superstitious, anti that says there other people. Well, you have to have the proper diet, have to have the proper General Health before the regime of regime before this will work. And he says, no, no, no, its just the inoculation. Well, it was to say that it was not only these rogue people, a nice chunk of income it was also robbing them of status. Yeah. Is were talking about a time when there was a a division professional Division Labor between surgeons and physicians. The surgeons were hands on people who mostly set broken bones and tree skulls. They did kind of the physical body really as artisanal work, actually, of of of physical body operations, physicians stood by where philosophers like and gave advice and sent expensive bills for, you know, another bag of powdered crayfish bone. Yes. Exact they were tenured professor. Their job was provide accumulated. Yes. And for one of their own gutsy a physician say this is all nonsensical absolutely nonsensical and we that in fact im sure really he hed been to london to the pound in hospital to look at somebody who became a friend at this sort of foundling hospital in lincolns field and feels where theyve been specific experiments which in which some of the children were inoculated with this elaborate preparation and an elaborate post inoculation, and others had any of it, and others had known this whole and it made absent, of course, it made absolutely no difference. The only thing that made difference was the inoculation itself. Of course, this is a theme that runs up into the book through the 19th century as well as we were talking with proust, prospera, that it seems. And when reading the book, simon i thought to myself, you know i would have been wrong consists entirely, right . Because i would have sided with the people. Say, whats the totality of your health and in the 19th century, when it comes to cholera a fascinating story involves louis pasteur, among others. Everyone was convinced that was the miasma rising from thames or from the sand or that responsible for the spread of cholera. And that what you needed were massive Public Health measures to deter this and they were right at some level. Yes, but they were wrong about the illness. Yeah, thats right. No, i mean the color of vibrio was identified by robert koch and again in the 1880s in alexander and in india, they were right in the sense, of course, cholera is generated from ethically contaminated water. So it is correct to apply radical disinfection to places where had happened, but they were utterly wrong about the assumption which fitted conveniently with people who are a quarantine skeptics. Was that these sources of, toxic poisoning from cholera, were iti. In other words, you had a kind of polluted pond or you a polluted water pump or something, and it necessarily could not possibly be contagious. It wouldnt travel even before the vibrio was discovered naturally on cruise news for a. A kind of contamination of upholstery in a carriage in Railway Train that in sanitary conditions you know, travels along with the shortening the distances and with the accelerate of of commerce. And so like they do, in fact, the wealthy as the point exactly. Exactly. And yet a beautiful of the scherzo what you had the fatal that they discovered the marcellus and it was this comma shape right and yeah and they didnt and so it again coming back to something that obviously resonates with own time you would be inclined to believe that it was the General Health of the population that was determining the spread of the disease. And you had to make the counterintuitive. No, its this little methyl comma entering the body. You have to that you have to fight. And pasteur is part of this story as well he is. And yes and a rematch. Yes. Whos one of the heroes of the who . I guess. One of the heroes of the book. Yes. Explain. Like gotti, a fascinating figure tells. Right. Well, mexicos family were converted but had extra ornery, kind of ancestral roots in literature. In fact, actually in mexico and ilea mentioning costs maternal grandfather had actually translated age hebrew poetry and his own hebrew dramas into russian. Theyd actually been performed the court of alexander the first that could only happen the family officially had become converted to orthodoxy. I think. But mentioning cough was himself an extraordinary kind of i mean he and his brother were kind of handfuls they grew up in kharkov, kharkiv in ukraine and mentioning cough really had had had a sort of you know, he worked essentially on first of all, on simple in first parents but he he he he narrowed everything down. He had a kind of sense the intuition really that about the immune system. And there was this great kind of epiphany. He has. Hes in St Petersburg when another hero, the book man quotes out of rfk you know probably talk about in a minute encounters but he goes off to sicily to messina and then he actually he actually he theres a which is inserted in the larvae of was it a kind of forgotten actually a kind of shrimp i think actually transparent. Yeah. And he actually sees a very enhanced kind of. What he calls the the eating cells, phagocytes actually enveloping and digesting the foreign bodies which were which were the micro microbial toxic microbes. So he publishes that becomes very famous about that. And he he is a great figure in petersburg, but hes politically problematic as this is students and we put his picture up i can actually i want to yeah theres theres vadim i have gained a lot students i say a bit about him how hes doing i think okay were good. We havent found him. Yeah, this, this this is about i have cain, who is an extraordinary figure and who again with someone who, as of his the book seemed to be shockingly but shockingly forgotten and absolutely worth writing. Haskin is another ukrainian who comes to the new Russian University in odessa. The in ukraine, the only university where as a who gets a professional education, he comes to odessa in to study maths, physics, in fact, just exactly, nearly the time of not only fiery student radicalism, but also at the moment where some alexander the second is assassinated by a radical group among whom is one jewish student, a jewish woman, a group called the terror group called the peoples will. This was going to invite yet another massive. Pogrom and half again as student, even though much of his was spent really in extraordinary kind of emotional self containment and modesty, joins this radical Student Organization and distributes guns is the first occasion on this one of you here now otherwise id be happy to be corrected first occasion. I know of in jewish history that community literally a you know habitually inured to being attacked by a violent pogrom riots takes up you know takes yes of control yet the situation by being given guns have been is one of a group who distributes to the community and it makes a big difference when the program duly happens in 1881 rather a scene i rather love is that a group of the students think who are the toughest in odessa . And the answer kosher butchers and have a particular show in odessa and not far but one of his friends actually he was the major gun smuggler goes gives of russia to these extremely skeptical ferocious stark shia butchers and and you dont want to mess with them and the next did not mess with them have is caught with a gun on his person three times and thrown into slammer and hes rescued from it by his doctor father by mentioning off and mentioning off finally says you know, i sympathize with everything youre doing that both in trouble with the university and petersburg the secret police in petersburg open a file comes very, very thick indeed on this suspicious figure. The mask match only cuff says you really have to give up this scary staff and devote yourself to science and have been kind of complies with that. And when mention goes to to the Institut Pasteur that first year of its existence in 1888. He brings kafka in with him, albeit as a very lowly worm, as in the assistant librarian and a parrot from the first microbiology course. And its there that hacking does, which people thought could not be done, works for years on the and the actuality the end of creating a vaccine against because pretty much and if you had a cholera vaccine. Well okay i have actually went the first time i went to india. Yes, exactly. Exactly. A long time ago. Film festival footnote but significant i think its the i think if i remember correctly, first vaccine against a bacterial bowel disease. Right. Whereas smallpox is viral and its understood to be different even though they dont have profound understanding what the difference is that thats right. So all sorts of complication occurred as a result actually, hes working on it before, you know, and actually barely, barely after the vibrio itself has been identified as a spanish microbe biologist. Shami farran had tried it out, but he had with very, very mixed results, try it out a similar he had done serial passage through lab animals but he failed to do random comparative trials which have kind did once he got to india. And as a result there was a not a good case where farran actually inoculate nuns in a convent and Something Like a third of them died actually get not a sufficient case of cholera to immunize against more lethal consequences. So so lufkin who is sort of unknown and as joseph requested the Institut Pasteur is is taken enormous risk with this. And when he finally decides its successful, he he inoculates himself right to the shock pasteur thats right. And nico and emil roux, he really was kind of on his own. A pasteur in the end because there was a complicated relationship between these great men at institute and at that particular moment in his old age, pasteur her become slightly jealous and slightly of roux and emil roux had rather captured this brilliant Young Research assistant from from matchstick off and pasteur kind of believe that the cholera vaccine real they all know since cholera is ebbing for the most part in europe that it was important to take it to a population that was suffering from cholera outbreaks. And thats when hosking goes to india simon, i want to bring the audience into our conversation shortly. But just a couple of things i wanted to talk to you about. First one is im not sure we have this a slide here is an extraordinary chapter about, the fight against plague, against bubonic plants. Yeah, and that, i think, is one of the is you know, theres struggle with here we are the with did you want this so you wanted a picture is straight vaccination. Yes exactly the struggle with smallpox. Oh and i have to throw because i should have known this. I didnt the origin of the word vaccine was its about how can its from the us from south from. Exactly, exactly the struggle against smallpox the struggle against cholera. But the struggle then against bubonic plague which is, you know, the most frightening epidemic illness, all of western memory takes us right to the beginning of the 20th century, right . It does. This is the assumption was that, you know, by the 18th century bubonic plague had gone for good. There was a very bad in marseilles in 1722, 23. But it was thought of as being in low numbers of mortality in the middle east, in egypt, turkey. But it was not thought to be really pandemic actually. And then in 1892, theres a terrible outbreak in gwangju, canton in china, then in china and then in hong kong. And its some of the pandemic weve forgotten about a bit of literature, the bubonic plague, the fifth, fifth bubonic plague wave kills between 20 and 30 Million People between. 1892 and the late 1920s were totally forgotten, you know, pretty much because it essentially wreaked havoc did touch down for moment in australia, in san francisco, briefly panic then ensued. I think it was 1905, Something Like that. But it was really devastating, terrifying. And this particular terrifying not just to the people, again, you know, living in the poorest conditions in in in india, for example, where of course, rats were commonplace and where there were rats were fleas and whether there were fleas, the plague bacillus would be would be with the fleas inside the. So it was it distressing from the point of view, not as terrifying as it was for those were very likely to die of it. But it was distressing for the overlords, the british raj because their entire kind of moral justification for being in india was that we were not interested devolving Political Rights to you, but we promise you that that we will give you the gift of our superior civilization. We will make you safer, more more prosperous. Yes and thereby healthier and confronted, not with wave after wave of very serious famine from the late 1870s onwards and, then, by this horrifying moment, enormous numbers of are dying, not just in india, generally but in particular in bombay, which was absolutely the center or engine of imperial wealth. And what happens is as usual, the british fight, the last epidemiological war they set about disinfecting cities and streets and houses. It in the same way that theyd done with slightly more justification with cholera. And of course, it absolutely no effect on the population of of that were carrying the bacillus the rats just moved off and the fleas and and the bacillus with them. But it caused so much this draco minion dragging people off train since beckenham for signs of buboes doctors sort of inspecting women. Buboes grow in the groin and in the armpits. It caused an enormous kind backlash. And there were strike and riots and the british Public Health official in poona was assassinated on the set the day that was celebrating. Queen victorias golden jubilee. So avenge a valdemar have gained up against it because he doesnt a medical degree just as a science degree. He was a russian so at a time when the russians according the british official mentality, were up to no good massing around khyber pass, prepared to descend into british in the clear sense he was of being possibly a spy and the medical of British India really didnt want to know, didnt want didnt understand it didnt want to know about microbiology at all. So he has struggle for funds and lab animals, everything you needed. But eventually, really, he sells the british on the idea that if there can be a profit lactic vaccine it be necessary to adopt these ferocious measures that would blow back into the face of the british authorities. He creates i think weve got heres a street vaccination at half husky and he only again he always inoculations himself first and he only worked on volunteers and yeah theres a picture. From 1900 this is the first mass Production Facility of vaccine anywhere in the world in bombay in 1900. And there are the flasks waiting for to go around all india. And so is an extraordinary moment he himself has a kind of tragic denouement to a quick word about gets prince. Well theres this becomes extraordinary millions of 2 million doses of plague vaccine produced three years. It really is an story operation warp it is absolutely operation warp and he starts out with only 53 people, fellow workers, this facility in bombay, he ends with 200. He needed more like two or 3000 to do this. But teams of inoculations are out to wherever the plague appeared at its most virulent. And the punjab was one of those areas. And then in 1902, theres a terrible when a contaminated batch of plague vaccine. Causes ten deaths by tetanus poisoning in a village called mount corral and half queen immediately. Never really is accepted. Part of the scientific medical establishment in india have gained immediately the blame this commission of inquiry. Hes fired his career is is sort of broken what actually had happened which haski knew was that the contamination that happened taking in the village forceps used to extract the india rubber stopper on the flask of vaccine have been dropped on the ground these rural vaccinations always happened in outdoors and open fields and the assistant who was preparing the doses had picked up the forceps and the merely them around in a solution of carbolic acid. Whereas harkin had insisted it was a it was a Pasteur Institute basic protocol on heat sterilization not carbolic acid. He also knew that pasteurs. Yeah, extremely well. Also knew that actually had contamination occurred at source in the Production Facility took two or three weeks to get to the particular village where the disaster a terrible odor on, mistake or odor would have come people to notice and noticed that at all. So his career is abso lutely broken. He goes back to britain. He writes a series of increasingly desperate letters. The three committees of commissions inquiry know what he doesnt know. He doesnt know that about this dropping of the fourth ets. But they do know and they still insisted but with decreasing certainty that that had been a in bombay and not a problem in the punjab. But his case has on he is cutting out newspaper cuttings about typhus exactly at this time and he clearly he thinks he is involved a kind of medical scientific dreyfus as indeed he was. But there is sort of happening to the story his case is taken up by a man called ronald ross, a fellow microbiology year who establishes gets a nobel prize. The link between anopheles mosquitoes and malaria. And none of us knows that this injustice had been done. And in the end, huff is absolute lutely vindicated publicly and in parliament. But he never gets his vocation back because unlike dreyfus exactly like dreyfus, he goes is vindicated, but never really reinstated in so i want to open to our audience a bit too. But let me just ask you quickly a question. One of the things that in a theme in this book is the idea of the politics of vaccination is in part of the history of vaccination. Right. Its always a political as it is right now. What is it that what is it . If you can begin to help, whats the psychology of antivaccination mania you like as you see it continually through this time . Because i of my key memories as a kid is getting the polio vaccine to put polio vaccine and it being treated as the most thing possible and now yet were seeing this kind of largely irrational, antivax nation think whats the key psychologic component of that . Well, i think you know, i mean, it was the enlightenment vision, wasnt it . Yes, actually, once knowledge was distributed and was accepted as irrefutable, in particular, scientific knowledge superseded human and primitive if paranoia would be banished forever, really in the face, we all, i suppose, had a second wave of optimism that when the internet arrived and with what seemed to be the unlimited possibility of the acceptance of the sovereignty of knowledge, you know what chumps we were really about that. So you know, we were talking earlier on about the counterintuitive sense in which you are willingly putting a bit of a foreign body in your foreign body. Exactly. And in a way i think the surprise is the resistance to that. The skeptic ability to thinking, for example, actually, when when when smallpox hits boston in 1721, a very moment matter, the puritan minister hears from is enslaved house servant and estimates that inoculation had been practiced in his area of west africa. He takes it and then he becomes a convinced proponent of it and converts physician. The doctor called sam old boys and they are instantly accused as was also the case with mary wortley montagu, of becoming party a satanic plot that actually, unbeknownst to them at, subconscious level, theyve been captured by the forces of satan. Now satan is bill gates and george soros and buried beneath central park. And the vaccine is a plot to rob you of the autonomy of your personal, of your body and vaccines are a way to insert chips inside your bloodstream. Its absolutely continuous and emotionally and that. So the misery really is how quickly and how the craziness persists. Let me simon let me turn it over to the audience as were we we talk all night, but id love to get get some questions. Can you talk about in isaacson book he mentions that it was a thermal phil bacteria in the marianas that taught them about mri because the bacteria learned how to protect itself against attacking and also the genetic the fact that certain people during bubonic plague and aids were unable to get contaminate because their genetics protected them and now theyre talking about neanderthal genes and the effect on cold right. I couldnt possibly comment now because im really not my wife who is geneticists. She has something she should answer the question. But i ive let me see someone else. Gentlemen, let me guess why do you think a person like dr. Who is in my esteemed like dr. Fauci, so demonized when i evaluated his amateur. Hes been a hero. I didnt catch other because the question is, why is it that dr. Fauci hidden in his and i think general estimation a hero has been vilified. And it strikes me as completely continuous with with the stories youve been telling us. Well, it it is a kind of piece of grotesque opportunism, of course, actually on the part. But its also the sense that, you know, you can take little snippets of information. It is, of course true that fouchier is institutes of allergies, Infectious Diseases, provided funds to the Wuhan Institute of virology. But why wouldnt you it was you know exactly this sort of thing about gain of function suddenly being seen as inherently diabolic, diabolical and unresponsive of all and part of a plot. So the fact actually grants being given for perfectly necessary crucial virological research especially you know around h1n1 ive got that im not wrong there but the other kind of instances of Infectious Diseases seem suddenly when the president talked about the china virus and kung flu seemed to be and the chinese were absolutely right to say absolutely not at the very early of covid, you put all bits together and you have suddenly a conspiracy theory. And there was also the sense in which i think on the right was a sense in which anthony fauci, deborah burks, was making the president look foolish. You know, he was an easy task, but when youre recommending bleach to me. But so, yes, kind of hunt for escape for someone in this who has illegitimately or falsely pretentious authority who claims to be, you know, to survive understand the situation better than you and who causes, in that view of economic disruption, you know, is it you know, how and these are the elements. Yeah. Persistently in the book its yeah its. An elite proposing countering two of treatments that will be economic disruption. Yes. And thats a story repeated. Yeah thats right. The beginning and ending chapter set book over time. But i didnt really want to write billboard all through. I knew all the readers would be would see that see it yourself. The shocking case right is ron desantis and Surgeon General joseph ron desantis actually was a champion of vaccination in florida and florida pretty well when vaccine first became available early 2021. Then in summer, suddenly he his mind radically is against lockdown and and is extremely when the Delta Variant hits. Hes suddenly started be very skeptical about the effectiveness of and florida measurable. He suffered a really serious excess mortality almost doubled between yeah exactly almost doubled between so hes rewritten that history between july and october of when that when delta started fade and now hes running his entire Campaign Around is yes and that sort of sense in which vaccines are actually on america whether theyre a little injection of the enlightened directly into your argument and the entire right so let me get some other folks involved here too. Lady here. So first of all, thank you for professor newton discussion. And this is a bit of a loaded question, but with the rat infestation that we have in new york city, do you think that oh, are you expecting barnacles . So the question is about infestation. The very notable especially the last couple of years, infestation of how frightened should we be . No other way. Well, not everybody plague. I think this is frightening, actually, just to have the conversation to be absolutely honest, im astonished to sort of move countries, to my other country, to britain, that theres been incredible amount of that. Theres a horrifying situation of the of the sewage effluent flowing into seaside and into the rivers and canals. Absolutely astonished. Actually, that that there hasnt been a case of cholera in south wales. So, you know, i really hope it wont happen. There are another have an enormous arsenal. There was case i mentioned actually of bubonic plague was discovered in rodents on one particular area of the shore around lake tahoe in. Fact the exact place where my wife and i took our children and they got so many many years ago so occasion early it shows up in rodent populations but not in in in toxically Critical Mass i think we take two more questions. Gentlemen here. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit youve written so much about jewish history and then the character of half kind in your book is so jewish and so, so interesting. At the end of his life, how he became just obsessed and with zionism and other aspects of jewish history. And im wondering if you could just maybe talk for a little bit about the relation between jewish culture and history and personal with his maverick type personalities like, cap time, right . So far be it me, but was in your mouth but if i can slightly swerve your question time any bit, what strikes me. It struck me particularly when i was writing volume two, the story of the period covering the renaissance through the very early 20th century was that were thought of by nonjewish rulers and elite populations as guardians of is a terrible medical secrets. My is of course was physician to you know to the very high members of ruling family and in the Muslim States of of north africa. But he wasnt the only person so it was slipped quickly that there was a little there was a christian literature about needing have jewish physicians of a university was one of the again in the christian middle ages was i think the place actually where were admitted on condition they studied medicine. So were sort of needed but because they were thought specifically to have occult or knowledge about antidotes to venom, they were also thought to be dangerous. And the murano doctor, queen elizabeth, the first was accused of being part of a spanish plot to poison her and tried to execute it as a result. So through many centuries, were living in both a heroic on a very dangerous razors edge. And im absolutely that this played into the suspicions that the medical and governing establish eichmann had about about half at the time that tetanus contamination case happened the viceroy lord curzon who had been vaccinated himself against play said and blamed and for bringing the honor and of the british raj into disrepute and said i want that man tried convicted and hanged hanged. It was and others you know applauded really. So it was an extraordinary sense that trafficking was one of those people. Again, whom we trusted to have a kind of spurious. The end in turning turned out to be a form of knowledge. There is. Ill just say one more thing. There was a very moment that i found in the archive. In 1899, because that was not i mean, kind of back to this beautiful photo of there he is there is the summer of 1899. And as a dinner to him by an organization of jewish professionals its called the maccabean sort. It still exists in london, many of whom are in science and medicine. And its a dinner in his honor and the the toast of haskin proposed by joseph lister, lord lister and goes out of his way in the other direction. There were famous semites in britain too, and says went out his way to say this is the noblest example of a noble race. He absolutely, fully understands the kind of constant subtext to which, if are hailed as, some sort of jewish wonder, you will almost certainly be vulnerable to antisemitic and and demonizing suspicions as well. So its a its a very moving moment. And one point in the dinner when huffington is given his own speech, its a speech partly about the danger he thought his own people in ukraine were to be from pogroms. And he was absolutely right about that. Of course, hacking turns to an english is his third language. She has to write it all out. He has a very beautiful of english and a very beautiful style of. But he had a very slow and a very heavy accent. And hough quinn turns to lister says, i really have to ask. So all through the when youve so kindly and generously supported me, do you remember that i am a and lister this old hero of british manner said yes, yes, and came repeats the question and lister then shouts yes. Always. You know. So its a its an amazing moment. Maybe we maybe have to stop. Its a wonderful place to stop. I simon is going to sign books. If some of you want to carry on this conversation, im sure its impossible to stop. Simon for 40 years, i have said my own good wife. The speed of simons mind forces me to race to keep up. Thank for sharing the fluency and the correct to doplease joio the stage schuyler