Professional Documents
Culture Documents
history
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A Family History of Illness was supported by a grant from the McLellan
Endowment, established through the generosity of Martha McCleary
McLellan and Mary McLellan Williams.
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www.washington.edu/uwpress
Subjects: lcsh: Walker, Brett L., 1967—Health. | Walker, Brett L., 1967—
Family. | Walker, Brett L., 1967—Homes and haunts—Montana. |
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Acknowledgments ix
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prologue. Nightmares 3
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chapter 1. Memories 15
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chapter 2. Immunodeficiencies 40
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chapter 3. Modalities 65
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chapter 4. Proteins 96
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chapter 5. Phenotypes 132
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chapter 6. Histories 165
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epilogue. Legacies 204
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Notes 221
Bibliography 241
Index 257
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of History at the time, I told him about the project and what I
was trying to accomplish with it. I had struggled with how to
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your title,” he said. Indeed, that became the title, as well as the
central theme of the book. I still have the piece of tablecloth,
and now I have this book, in part because of David’s support
and suggestions.
I learned a great deal during my year in the Boston area, and
I owe the opportunity to Ian Miller, my friend and colleague.
ix
x acknowledgments
read the manuscript for the press and transformed the book with
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Ben Swartz. I’ll always remember the heroic efforts of the team
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Ash’s Okinawan Karate was a gem, and I owe Lisa and Brian a
debt of gratitude for keeping me disciplined and healthy. Mostly,
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4 prologue
burst on, and a large male nurse entered, his eyes darting about,
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the chest and lungs). The entire hallucination of snow and cold
and time slipped away, dreamlike in how it came and went—as
as
I write now, I can retrieve only fragments of it. The harsh fluo-
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rassed, I could only muster a timid “I’m cold.” I was not doing
well and I knew it.
to
— · —
n
into the crowd of doctors and nurses. Little did I know then how
many times I’d hear this question during my prolonged stay in
as
eventual recovery.
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each more specialized and secluded than the last, each emblem-
atic, in my delirium, of my deteriorating medical condition,
as if I were spiraling down through Dante’s concentric circles
of hell. I started out in a room with a television that buzzed
with CNN and news of the shooting of Arizona representative
Gabrielle Giffords. I was soon moved to the inner sanctum,
Nightmares 7
hose, but when she stumbled a third and then fourth time, the
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But the pump sucked it out for days. If the gelatinous fluid was
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begin to flash before my eyes in what is, I’ve been told, the
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died from hepatitis as a little girl—I knew that. But that hardly
seemed related to my killer pneumonia. Bodies and health
of
was all over the place: I had been sick before but had always
ss
— · —
Eve, I could only lie in bed and sweat, my head pounding. The
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they probably would have pulled the plug. He called for more
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“There’s magic in this bag. I’ve seen it before. You’ll be just fine
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idea how long I slept, but after I woke I never allowed another
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or her how much better I felt, even if half the time I wasn’t so
sure. The night sweats in fact persisted for weeks, even after I
to
— · —
lar to what millions of people face every day. Instead, this book
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bodies but also about how those microbes may drive behavior
and physiological development in a manner that destabilizes
to
steer the growth of our organs. They educate our immune sys-
e
tem, teaching it to tell friend from foe. They affect the devel-
ss
they seem like old film reels rapidly clicking away in our minds,
are built from such proteins, as is the immune system. There
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potent new way to view the holistic content of the body, then
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