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test for when a kid was sick enough to be sent home immediately, and would also not be allowed to return within 24 hours of register- ing such a temperature. But in ancient times, before the medical community under- stood what caused illness and disease, fever was often thought to be the disease itself. In his discussion of these early concepts and philosophies of fever, we learn about two of the most influential medical thinkers of that time: Hippocrates and Galen. Together, they are considered the cofounders of the pre-modern view of the health state as a balance of various humors, each responsible for a different aspect of mind and body and ruled by a different bodily organ. A fever resulted when an imbalance among the four occurred, or if a problem arose with the production of one or more, or any other number of reasons. The causes for such prob- lems could be natural, such as something the patient ate or did, or non-natural, such as spirits or impure or bad thoughts. Common treatments for these fevers at the time included rest, bleeding, prayer, moving to a different locale (sometimes the location of the person was thought to induce the fever), diet, and often quack medicinal cures. Hamlin is quite thorough in his research of fever, including how conceptions of fever were represented through words, language, lit- erature, letters; how conceptions of fever were influenced by reign- ing or popular philosophies of different time periods (such as how people thought of fever during the Romantic Age); and how fever became gendered, or associated with heightened female emotions and "hysteria." After 1800, we enter the modern age of fever, and Hamlin writes that thinking about fever changed in three main ways: first, it became plural as people understood that they were not suffering from the same type of fever but fevers; second, that these fevers were caused by distinct and different agents; and third, that fever would be defined as an internal body temperature higher than 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. We begin to enter the age of germ theory of disease, the use of thermometers to track that all-important temperature, and the regular use of medications and techniques, such as the use of cold water or ice packs, to relieve symptoms and bring down tem- peratures enough to let the disease run its course. Of particular interest to registered nurses is the chapter title "Numbers and Nurses," which describes recognition by the medical establishment that excellent nursing care often helped patients overcome and survive their fevers, particularly for typhoid patients. Hence arose the profession of "private duty fever nurse," who were hired by those who could afford it to take charge of nursing a loved one back to health. "Many of the actual tactics and the ethos of command came from Florence Nightingale, and before her John Pringle, and reflect the legacy of the military hospital," writes Ham- lin. "The fever nurse, with hospital training and techniques, would bring military order into the home of the (necessarily relatively wealthy) patient: shall would replace should. The logic was simple: care really mattered, and the nurse was the expert carer." In the 20th century, Hamlin writes that our relationship and understanding of fever "has been something utterly different than at any other time in human history." With the rise of antipyretics— aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen—to control dangerously high fevers and a better understanding of how fever is part of and contributes to our body's natural immune response in fighting pathogens, fever is no longer something to be feared—or at least in the industrialized nations. Hamlin point out that it's a different story in other parts of the world, where malaria and other diseases are experiencing a comeback. In the section titled "Fever and the modern mom," Hamlin explores how the treatment of fever has largely shifted from the purview of doctors outside the home to mothers inside the home. Every mother was expected to have and use a short-stick thermome- ter, there was evolving thinking about the best "temperature access sites" to get a reading, and there were debates about what constitut- ed an elevated temperature. One thing is for sure, said Hamlin. Concepts of fever can never be stable and will continue to change and evolve as medicine, technolo- gy, and our ideas about healthcare change. —lucia Hwang SLOW DANCING WITH A STRANGER: Lost and Found in the Age of Alzheimer's By Meryl Comer Harperone, 2014 "The man I live with is not the man I fell in love with and married," writes Meryl Comer, in Slow Dancing with a Stranger. As her hus- band, Dr. Harvey Gralnick, chief of hematology and oncology at the National Institutes of Health, transforms from a quirky, brilliant partner into a forget- ful, confused, and ulti- mately non-vocal/violent stranger, Comer comes to understand another truth of life in the wake of Alzheimer's. She herself is not the woman she once knew. An Emmy award- winning reporter, TV producer, and busi- ness talk show host, Comer left her career to become a full-time per- sonal caregiver to her husband—a job she has fulfilled for nearly two decades. Unflinching in its portrayal of how Alzheimer's impacts everyone in its orbit, this memoir highlights the extreme lengths to which Comer has gone to follow her husband into the unknown. "I am a person who does not quit once she embarks on something important. There is a price to pay for that type of determination, and I'm living it," Comer writes. As patient advocates, nurses may be interested in reading about Comer's transition from Dr. Gralnick's wife to his bedside caregiver and his guide through the confusing process of diagnos- ing Alzheimer's in a man still in his 50s, testing medications, and j u ly | a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 w w w . n a t i o n a l n u r s e s u n i t e d . o r g n a t i o n a l n u r s e 15