THE SPRING OF BOOKS
The May of books
AGNESE COLLINO
presents his novel
The Dime Disease: The story of polio and how it has changed our society
Code Books
Moderate the evening Lucia Roman
Agnese Collino
Agnese Collino is a molecular biologist with a PhD in molecular oncology and a master’s degree in Journalism and institutional science communication. You are a member of the scientific supervision of the Veronesi Foundation, where you carry out direct dissemination activities to citizens and schools, and are responsible for the Science and Innovation Organizational Committee of BergamoScienza. You have published “The 10 cent disease” (Codice edizioni) and, with Chiara Segrè, “The secrets of centenarians” (Sperling & Kupfer).
The book
Finalist book for the 2023 Galileo Literary Prize
It was December 30, 1911 when the “Corriere della Sera” reported for the first time a short article on a “mysterious disease”: polio. A disease with many paradoxes, which had always existed but had never caused epidemics before, strangely seemed to prefer those who lived in better hygienic conditions and, although not the most frequent or deadly infection of its time, it represented the greatest fear of Americans after the atomic bomb. Polio became the great enemy to be defeated, thanks to the combination (unprecedented until then) of an important political push, enormous media attention and the strong emotional impact of the damage, sometimes very serious, of this disease. Agnese Collino retraces the stages of this story – from the revolution in charity to superstar scientists, from the race for the vaccine to the birth of intensive care units – to show how the fight against polio has generated innovations that are still part of our lives today. Straddling past and present, “polio was one of the pathologies in the history of medicine that changed our society the most, even if today we no longer remember it.”
Free entry.
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