Thomas C. Rosenthal, MD
In his history-based novel, “Bloodletting & Germs: A Doctor in Nineteenth Century Rural New York,” the professor emeritus of family medicine tells the story of Jabez Allen, a doctor who worked in the Western New York village of East Aurora during the 1800s.
The book describes the evolution of medical practices in the 19th century through the eyes of Allen, whose life and experiences Rosenthal painstakingly researched and recreated. It explains how Allen’s medical practice developed during a period of enormous social and scientific change that included the Civil War and the cholera epidemic of the mid-1800s.