The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox

Maybe it's because I have a degree in both history and English, but this book suited my taste perfectly, and I was surprised at the negative reviews. I picked up the book and finished it in two days because I couldn't put it down. Ms. Carrell has made the tale read like a historical whodunit. I read her chapter, then her endnotes. If you like historical fiction and you also like historical nonfiction, I think you would enjoy this book.

At last, a page turner about smallpox! This brilliant book tells two parallel stories about the discovery of inoculation by the English-speaking world around 1720. On one side of the Atlantic, the aristocratic Lady Mary Worley Montague convinces the Princess of Wales that she should deliberately infect her children to spare them the horror of full-blown smallpox. Unknown to her, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston starts doing the same thing in Boston. In both cases, they were taking medical practices from outsiders, from the Turks and from African-born slaves. The Establishment accused them of attempted murder. After all, they were deliberately infecting people with a disease that was either lethal or disfiguring, and that was certainly contagious. Thank heavens that they did. Reading this book makes one wonder if science is any more able to learn from outside today than it was 275 years ago.

This book kept me up half the night to finish it. Pretty good for a story where the eventual outcome is already well known.

An excellent book that reads like a novel but is the result of detailed research..as the chapter notes prove. More historians should write like this...

The drama that surrounded Lady Mary in London and Dr. Boylston in Boston as they bravely sought a cure for smallpox, is riveting. Carrell has captured the struggles and triumphs lyrically and intimately. Through her prose, the terror of the disease, its devastation, the times and the heroic actions of a few inspite of the lonley and harsh consequences of their actions, are palpable. This is a long and lush read.