Healthcare & History: Hannah Wunsch, The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care, with David M. Oshinsky

• Books
• History/NYC
• Science/Tech/Health

Hannah Wunsch’s The Autumn Ghost is a suspenseful, authoritative account of how the battle against a mid-century polio epidemic sparked a revolution in medical care. In this unique event, she converses with David M. Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prize winner for Polio: An American Story.

The Autumn Ghost reveals how insiders and iconoclasts came together in one overwhelmed hospital to save polio patients dying of respiratory failure. In a novel approach to care, over a thousand medical students hand-ventilated patients twenty-four hours a day to keep them alive. This radical intervention marked a turning point in medicine, galvanizing the development of modern life support and the creation of intensive care units—the crucial foundation of modern medical care.