[9] The Nature journal positively reviewed Russell's Epidemics, Plagues and Fevers as a valuable service to public health for collecting important facts concerning preventable diseases.

[11] He wrote that Rollo Russell "suffered all his life from a morbid shyness so intense as to prevent him from achieving anything that involved contact with other human beings.

[2][4][14] Apart from documenting the effects of fog on health, such as lung diseases, it also listed the damage caused to buildings and monuments.

Russell argued from medical literature and statistical data that cancer is prevalent in communities where meat, alcohol, coffee and tea are excessively consumed.

[9] Russell found that the monks had a lower rate of cancer mortality compared to the general population and this confirmed the health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

But the author was, in our opinion, working on the right lines and had gone as far as a non-medical writer without special facilities for the consultation of official unpublished statistics would be able to go.

"[23] A positive review in The New England Journal of Medicine stated that "though doubtless not conclusive, such a work is of value as a contribution to the study and ultimate solution of the great problem.

"[19] Conversely, the New York Medical Journal attacked his statements as inaccurate and dismissed the book because Russell was not qualified in medicine.

"[26] However, statistician Frederick Ludwig Hoffman positively reviewed the book, commenting that it contained "some exceptionally valuable observations on the relation of diet to cancer frequency, the temperature of food, the increase of excessive alimentation, and a rough outline of certain supposed factors accountable for cancer occurrence.