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  • Brève histoire des épidémies au Québec: Du choléra à la COVID-19 by Denis Goulet
  • David Wright
Goulet, Denis –Brève histoire des épidémies au Québec: Du choléra à la COVID-19. Québec: Septentrion, 2020. Pp. 172.

In 1847, amid an emerging typhus epidemic, the public health authorities of Montréal frantically built fever sheds along the Saint Lawrence River to care for and contain infected Irish immigrants debarking from dozens of ships. Sanitary police were called in to act as a barrier to prevent the potentially contagious from escaping the scenes of misery under cover of darkness. Amid the palpable tensions, the Grey Nuns and the newly formed Sisters of Providence selflessly tended to the sick crammed into makeshift barracks, hundreds of whom would succumb in short order to what was known as "ship's fever." The Bishop of Montréal descended upon the dying to deliver last rites to his coreligionists before they were buried hastily in mass graves. Ultimately, several thousand died in the scorching heat of July and August of that year, including, as the epidemic inevitably spread throughout the city, the Mayor himself.

The great typhus disaster is but one of the principal epidemics showcased in this informative "brief history" of epidemics in Quebec. The book is divided into two principal parts: the first covers the period from the cholera pandemic of 1831–1832 to the smallpox epidemic of 1885; the second begins with the Spanish flu of 1918 and concludes with the arrival of AIDS in the 1980s. The echoes of past responses to epidemics will no doubt resonate with readers living through the current COVID-19 crisis. Cholera prompted the installation and formalization of quarantine protocols; the typhus epidemic encouraged the establishment of municipal health boards; the smallpox riots of 1885 reflected the longstanding suspicion of, and resistance to, compulsory vaccination. Despite the implementation of sanitary reform and discoveries associated with "scientific medicine," the remedies of mainstream medicine were often insufficient. The 1918 Spanish flu revealed the limitations of the bacteriological revolution; the decennial polio outbreaks highlighted our growing preoccupation with technological solutions (such as the iron lung); and AIDS demonstrated how effective therapeutics and vaccines sometimes take years, indeed decades, to develop.

Brève histoire des épidémies provides an accessible compendium of many of the prominent infectious disease outbreaks in the history of Quebec after the conquest. It will be of particular value to a general public eager to dip into medical history and to peruse the captivating stories of sacrifice, suffering, and scapegoating in the past. Readers, for example, might be surprised to learn that more residents of Quebec city died of cholera in 1832 than COVID-19 in 2020, despite the fact that the city's population was, in 1832, one-tenth of what it is today. The book's strongest contribution may lie in its careful analysis of the construction of Quebec's public health infrastructure over the last two centuries. Who knew that the Rockefeller Foundation, so active in Latin America, also played a pivotal role in funding unites sanitaires across the province during the interwar period? For academic historians, there are, of course, some downsides to emphasizing only the major epidemic outbreaks of the past two centuries. It is easy to forget that the biggest infectious disease killer of the 1800s was actually tuberculosis, which was so widespread as to [End Page 200] be considered endemic. What is more, the very high death rates from nonepidemic diseases of urban capitalism—"summer diarrhoea," measles, and "enteric fevers"—merit relatively little attention, even though Montréal had the dubious reputation of boasting the highest rates of infant mortality in the Western world in the decade leading up to the First World War.

Nevertheless, this is a readable and accessible book that conveys technical aspects of disease transmission very clearly while maintaining a sensitivity to the diverse cultural and social aspects of epidemic outbreaks. Goulet demonstrates vividly how societal responses were often pluralistic, with some people placing faith in medical science and the power of government to do good, whilst others were more skeptical of the motives of medical men and...

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