I Am Perhaps Dying
The Medical Backstory of Spinal Tuberculosis Hidden in the Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham
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Narrated by:
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Ben Collins
About this listen
Invalid teenager Leroy Wiley Gresham left a seven-volume diary spanning the years of secession and the Civil War (1860-1865). He was just 12 when he began, and he died at 17, just weeks after the war ended. His remarkable account, recently published as The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865, edited by Janet E. Croon (2018), spans the gamut of life events that were of interest to a precocious and well-educated Southern teenager - including military, political, religious, social, and literary matters of the day. This alone ranks it as an important contribution to our understanding of life and times in the Old South. But it is much more than that. Chronic disease and suffering stalk the young writer, who is never told he is dying until just before his death.
Dr. Rasbach, a graduate of Johns Hopkins medical school and a practicing general surgeon with more than three decades of experience, was tasked with solving the mystery of LeRoy’s disease. Like a detective, Dr. Rasbach peels back the layers of mystery by carefully examining the medical-related entries. What were LeRoy’s symptoms? What medicines did doctors prescribe for him? What course did the disease take, month after month, year after year? The author ably explores these and other issues in I Am Perhaps Dying to conclude that the agent responsible for LeRoy’s suffering and demise turns out to be Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a tiny but lethal adversary of humanity since the beginning of recorded time.
In the second half of the 19th century, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accounting for one-third of all deaths. Even today, a quarter of the world’s population is infected with TB, and the disease remains one of the top 10 causes of death, claiming 1.7 million lives annually, mostly in poor and underdeveloped countries.
While the young man was detailing the decline and fall of the Old South, he was also chronicling his own horrific demise from spinal TB. These five years of detailed entries make LeRoy’s diary an exceedingly rare (and perhaps unique) account from a 19th-century TB patient. LeRoy’s diary offers an inside look at a fateful journey that robbed an energetic and likeable young man of his youth and life. I Am Perhaps Dying adds considerably to the medical literature by increasing our understanding of how tuberculosis attacked a young body over time, how it was treated in the middle 19th century, and the effectiveness of those treatments.
©2018 Dennis A. Rasbach (P)2018 Savas BeatieListeners also enjoyed...
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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There is a River
- The Story of Edgar Cayce
- By: Thomas Sugrue
- Narrated by: Mitch Horowitz
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) is known to millions today as the grandfather of the new age. A medical clairvoyant, psychic, and Christian mystic, Cayce provided medical, psychological, and spiritual advice to thousands of people who swore by the effectiveness of his trance-based readings.
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Insightful
- By Reg on 08-08-18
By: Thomas Sugrue
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The Grape Cure
- By: Johanna Brandt
- Narrated by: Troy W. Hudson
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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This classic is still making its mark over 80 years since its debut. Author Johanna Brandt shares a personal journey of living with cancer and her discovery of how the beneficial properties of grapes cured her disease by refreshing and purifying cell structures. The virtues of naturopathy are extolled, and listeners are encouraged to detoxify their bodies and prevent disease (namely cancer) through a combination of fasting and a diet of grapes.
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interesting... 5Genocide 2020 - ????
- By Alednam A Uonopk on 04-14-21
By: Johanna Brandt
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The Pain Chronicles
- Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering
- By: Melanie Thernstrom
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas.
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Informative, well researched and nicely written
- By Nathan O'Hara on 08-21-10
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The Sawbones Book
- The Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine
- By: Justin McElroy, Dr. Sydnee McElroy
- Narrated by: Justin McElroy, Dr. Sydnee McElroy
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this - and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the terrifying detours along the way.
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Close but no cigar . . .
- By Amanda Buffkin on 12-22-18
By: Justin McElroy, and others
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Notes on Nursing
- What It Is and What It Isn't
- By: Florence Nightingale
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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These outspoken writings by the founder of modern nursing record fundamentals in the needs of the sick that must be provided in all nursing. Nightingale covers such timeless topics as ventilation, noise, food, bed and bedding, light, cleanliness, and observation of the sick.
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"old nurse" from California
- By Mary on 11-22-11
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Flowers in the Blood
- The Story of Opium
- By: Jeff Goldberg, Dean Latimer, William Burroughs - introduction
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Opium has played a dramatic and varied role in human history, inspiring religious veneration, scientific exploration, the bitterest rancor, and the most fanciful ecstasy. Now, authors Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer have provided a complete, insightful history of opium. Flowers in the Blood lifts the veil of mystery that has surrounded opium down through the ages.
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OPIATE DECRIMINALIZATION
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 06-18-14
By: Jeff Goldberg, and others
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Asleep
- The Forgotten Epidemic That Became Medicine’s Greatest Mystery
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.
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Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery
- By joyce on 12-14-14
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The Knife Man
- The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
- By: Wendy Moore
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's murky and macabre world - a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.
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Brilliant
- By Bird on 12-02-15
By: Wendy Moore
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Ten Drugs
- How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.
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Engrossing to physicians & lay persons alike
- By C. White on 03-08-19
By: Thomas Hager
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The Demon Under The Microscope
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
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Great Book!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
By: Thomas Hager
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The Royal Art of Poison
- Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul
- By: Eleanor Herman
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions.
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Relieved and surprised
- By Amber on 09-28-18
By: Eleanor Herman
What listeners say about I Am Perhaps Dying
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Thanks
- 04-02-19
Oh! The Suffering.
This is the story of a young man who suffered terribly from an early age with a disease that was not well understood at the time. The attempts to cure the disease or simply to relieve the pain, generally always brought on more pain and suffering. Some of the "medicines and cures" used in that day and time border on comical, but it was anything but comical to the those enduring it. So sad. Thank God, modern medicine can alleviate so much of the suffering today. Else we might still be experiencing what young Leroy Gresham did.
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- Shawna
- 11-11-18
For the medical/technical minded
This book was a little different than what I expected, but it truly is what is says, a book about the disease and the records of it that this young man left behind in his journal. Has lots of information concerning what the young man suffered, what his symptoms were and the treatments that were administered. Lot of information about this forgotten disease. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
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- Margaret
- 12-07-18
Redundant
This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author.
I have mixed feelings about this book. The information on how Tuberculosis was treated and the effectiveness of those treatments was interesting. I think it could have been completed in half the time.
Unfortunately, many things were repeated almost word for word. I am sure the diary has some interesting passages, but the only ones quoted were basically the same - about how his legs hurt and how he’s not improving. Several quotes were made at one point and it was the same thing over and over.
This book was about uncovering the cause of Leroy’s illness. As the doctor “peeled back the layers of the mystery” they also stated Leroy’s doctors knew all along what he was suffering from. No mystery then. To clarify or delve into , as they do, the various treatments is great, but to write as though they are diagnosing when he was already diagnosed, was for me, irritating.
This is the first book I have listened to by this narrator ( Ben Collins ) and I think he did a fine job narrating this content.
There are no explicit sex scenes, excessive violence or swearing.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.
Story 2.5/5
Narration 4/5
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1 person found this helpful
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- KD
- 11-08-18
Amazing read
Very powerful. At the age of 12 things like death seem like an after thought. Not so for LeRoy. At the age of 12 he knew something was wrong with him and he kept a diary up until then. Modern science has not gotten rid of Tuberculosis and it still vexes us today. To be 12 during the civil was and having to deal with that knowing the next day mgiht be his last. I'm shocked that someone was able to keep the motivation to write in his journal as he did.
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- Elizabeth
- 09-22-22
Unexpected
When I purchased this book, I did not expect that it would be a daily recitation of two or three lines of the same medical complaints of the poor boy. I expected that he would describe his daily life experienced through a window and include much more history. It could have been a much better book.
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- J&k
- 09-30-18
very interesting
This was a very interesting and we'll documented case of a terminally ill patient and the struggles with the medical treatment available during the civil was , wow has medicine came a long way the book had great quality narration and was an easy listen, I would recommend this book.
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- Fact addict
- 06-03-21
So, so...
The thing I couldn’t get around for the whole book was the narrator’s constant mispronunciation of the young man’s first name.
It made me crazy! WHEN will Audible/Amazon/other recording companies learn to check on their narrators’ pronunciation!? I have mentioned this in many (almost all, really) medically oriented stories in addition to some with other idiosyncratic pronunciations. The name if the young patient in this book is pronounced “LE-roy,” NOT “Le-ROY.” The name is nit at all uncommon in the southern United States; it is rare today, but used to be relatively common- lower socioeconomic groups once tended to use it. The word in French means
“The king.”
The story itself is heartrending, and unfortunately all too often happened in even the “civilized,” world before the development of drugs such as we take fir granted in today’s society.
An interesting sidelight here is the fact that the Civil War became a peripheral item in this story, during a time when the underlying news was always about the war. Rather refreshing, in a way.
Sad, sorry tale, that all too often became the story of many victims of TB- killed before they really had a chance to live.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-23-19
Fantastic content and narrator!
This is a detailed account of a boy dying from spinal TB. The author did a great job taking the entires from LeRoy’s journal and incorporating current medical knowledge to diagnose LeRoy with TB. The narrator did a spectacular job brining the book to life! I couldn’t stop listening!
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- mhsneon
- 11-02-18
Detaile view into medicine during the Civil War.
Very interesting view into the medical treatments given during the time of the Civil War for TB. The author giving details on what the different medications and treatments did and how they are related to modern medicine was educational, though I would have liked even more detail, the amount given is a good balance for many audience types. I enjoyed the fact that the information was recorded by the patient. The book allows the reader to see and feel as the patient slowly loses his confidence and will as his symptoms get worse and treatments don't work, but still try's to participate in life. I definitely plan on reading "The War Outside My Window" now to learn more about his life and the war through his eyes.
"This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."
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- Gillian
- 11-02-18
Mostly As A Companion to The War Outside My Window
‘Cause if you haven’t read that, you might be dead in the water with I Am Perhaps Dying. This book by Dr. Rasbach chronicles LeRoy’s many illnesses, primarily his tuberculosis (at least that’s his diagnosis based on the “cures” LeRoy was undergoing, and his journal entries of symptoms). It can get pretty technical, not exactly for the layman, but if you already know LeRoy Wiley Gresham from his diaries, it’ll be of interest to you. The poor kid went through a lot in his desperate and short life. If you haven’t heard of him, you might think he’s a total whiner as the only parts of his diary that are narrated here are of his ailments, not his take on history and the ongoing Civil War.
It can get pretty repetitive too. Alum water as a cure is mentioned in the first part, then in the second section, then it’s explained again. Same goes with alcohol and with opium and with many other medicines used. Then there are diary entries read in part as they relate to what Rasbach is discussing which go on to be read in full for the last two hours of the book where every single day has been mined to find LeRoy’s complaints for that day.
I guess I should say: that gets to be pretty sad, and one wonders what living with so debilitated an individual did to his parents who had to stand by and watch. Plus, they never told LeRoy about his diagnosis (for, though there was no understanding of TB, there certainly was the understanding of the death sentence consumption doled out), so he was unaware of his fate. There are many, many entries where he speaks: I hope this soon goes away; I wonder when I’ll be better, etc. etc. It’s not until eight days before his death that he comes to realize what the title of this audiobook states.
Ben Collins does a good job with the narration. The litany of complaints could come off as whiny, but instead, we feel LeRoy as a confused boy/young man, one who is very tired of being exhausted and of living in pain. Plus, there is a rather amusing section where the text from advertisements for the “cures” of the day are read, and you kinda get that snake-oil salesman feel from his tones.
As a companion to LeRoy’s diaries, I Am Perhaps Dying is fairly interesting. But you HAVE to read that first or justice will not be done to LeRoy’s work and memory.
I received a free book in exchange for this honest and unbiased review
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4 people found this helpful