Liane Maria Bertucci’s Influenza, a medicina enferma chronicles the theories and lived experiences of institutions and individuals of all classes who negotiated, suffered through, recovered, and died from the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 in São Paulo, Brazil. Worldwide, this epidemic took the lives of more people than World War I and killed 1 percent of São Paulo’s population alone. Bertucci’s analysis, the only publication of such magnitude regarding the 1918 epidemic in Brazil, contributes to a small and growing scholarly and literary writings concerning this global epidemic. Her focus on a single city leads to a narrative and analysis of unprecedented depth and breadth. She shines light on the complex interrelations and dizzying multiplicity of scientific, hygienic, and urban theories, as well as institutional responses and treatments. This focus also allows her room to delve into individual experiences of the epidemic.
Bertucci contextualizes the epidemic within the broader history...
