Product Description
One-third of the world's population is currently infected with the TB bacillus and up to ten per cent of these individuals will go on to develop tuberculosis. Today the disease is most prevalent in Africa and South Asia, but a century and a half ago it was the largest single cause of death in Europe and North America. In "Tuberculosis Then and Now", leading scholars and new researchers in the field reflect on the changing medical, social, and cultural understanding of the disease and engage in a wider debate about the role of narrative in the social history of medicine and how it informs current debates and issues surrounding the treatment of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Through a case study of the history of tuberculosis and its treatment, this collection examines medicine and health care from the perspectives of class, race, and gender, providing a challenging and refreshing addition to the field of bacteria-centred accounts of the history of medicine.Contributors of this title include Peter Atkins (University of Durham), David Barnes (University of Pennsylvania), Alison Bashford (Harvard and University of Sidney), Tim Boon (Science Museum, London), Linda Bryder (University of Auckland), Flurin Condrau (University of Manchester), Jorge Molero-Messa (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), Helen Valier (University of Houston), John Welshman (University of Lancaster), and Michael Worboys (University of Manchester). ... Read more

Product Description
Tuberculosis has claimed more than a billion lives worldwide. In this acclaimed book, Dr. Frank Ryan tells the remarkable story of the dedicated doctors, chemists, and bacteriologists who halted the course of this ferocious disease--until the "old enemy" found in AIDS a deadly ally to form a drug-resistant synergy. 8 pages of photos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A valient effort
Frank Ryan writes overly long about the attempts to fight tuberculosis.Admittedly, Ryan is no historian.His work bounces along from one aspect of the stuggle to another, while only the most tenuous relation is suggested.He bogs down in the details of tangential aspects of the story and it is only in reflective hindsight that one begins to find continuity.

Ryan's book traces the many threads of research that produced ever-increasing breakthroughs in controlling tuberculosis; the researchers involved operated more or less independently, unaware of each other's existence and progress, thus affording little opportunity for cooperation.

Ryan's complicated story of the many contributions to tuberculosis research perhaps seems mildly disheartening.The search for treatments for tuberculosis spread across a far greater geography and period of time.The presentation of these various groups researching tuberculosis, brought together in a single tome with decades of work artificially telescoped into a few hundred pages, blurs the reality that researchers at the time did not see the opportunities for cooperation with the clarity of hindsight.In fairness, Ryan did try to present scientists laboring, incognizant of each other's work, isolated by oceans and political ideologies.However the petty struggles and backstabbing over patent rights, royalties and scientific prestige suggest baser motives than one would like to attribute to persons engaged in saving mankind from a deadly disease.

Simply amazing!!
As a lung doctor coming from a country where tuberculosis is a common disease I thought this book was going to be interesting. I was wrong. It was fascinating! I made the mistake of start reading it while I was working on some professional projects. The result was several nights of poor sleep just because I started my reading after finishing my work late at night and I just could not stop reading it! I am going to buy several copies for some of my coleagues. This is a great book

Entertaining & fascinating at the same time!
This book really gives the inside story about Tuberculosis or "Consumption" as it has been known for centuries. The first chapter was a little slow and preachy, but by the 3rd chapter the author really takes off with fascinating details and glimpses into the horrible suffering of TB victims. Bless the memory of all those nameless souls who died of this dreadful, perplexing, and still 'consuming' disease. Truly a sad story in the annals of medicine, and a deeper look at our mortal vulnerability to the invisible microbes that threaten our lives daily.We think we have found all the answers in our super technical, scientifically advanced generation, but this book proves that we are vastly outnumbered in our battle with lethal diseases such as TB, AIDS, SARS, and certain cancers. As long as their is life there will be suffering, and this book offers a closer look at that undesirable but certain reality.

Superb Book on How Science Saved Lives
This book should be required reading for our schools!It shows how people communicated ideas and progress on the cure for tuberculosis and made incredible discoveries!It reads like a novel and is superb!

Must reading: how science happens. Why is it out of print?
Certainly the great hallmark of modern civilization is the dramatically increased ease of communication, and it is this ease of communication which has so changed the face of modern science. It is fitting, then, that Dr. Ryan begins his book with a brief history of tuberculosis leading up to Koch's epic-making lecture on 24 August 1882 announcing his discovery of the cause of tuberculosis. Towards the end of the chapter he quotes the protest of an editor at the New York Times about the delay in receiving the news in America; the editor wrote, "it is safe to say that the little pamphlet which was left to find its way through the slow mails . . . outweighed in importance and interest for the human race all the press dispatches which have been flashed under the Channel since the date of the delivery of the address - March 24."

As the book proceeds, we see the effect of the growth of the worldwide scientific establishment and the network of scientists and ideas that have led the battle against the "white plague." As fascinating and compelling as is the subject of the search for the cure for tuberculosis, I think an even more important theme of the book is just exactly how science works. We see Paul Erlich influenced by Koch's lecture and the coincidental development of the sanatorium movement. We see Selman Waksman working in soil microbiology and taking as an assistant the young René Dubos who, reading an article by Winogradsky, would drastically change his career to focus on what he described as "the biochemical unity of life" and what would come to be known as the ecology of disease and health. We see Oswald Avery (see "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry) assisted partially by Dubos in discovering "that DNA was the wonder chemical of heredity and life." And we're still only about a quarter of the way through the book.

It's true that the book reads somewhat like a thriller, with one discovery leading to the next, and with the inevitable dead ends and red herrings, but through it all we are impressed with the steady, relentless stream of study, investigation, and discovery. It is certainly one of the best illustrations I have ever read of how science works. It should be required reading for, well, everyone.
... Read more

Product Description
This book provides all the vital information you need to know about tuberculosis, especially in the face of drug-resistant strains of the disease. Coverage includes which patient populations face an elevated risk of infection, as well as which therapies are appropriate and how to correctly monitor ongoing treatment so that patients are cured. Properly administer screening tests, interpret their results, and identify manifestations of the disease, with authoritative guidance from expert clinicians from around the world.

• Discusses screening tests for tuberculosis so you can interpret their results and identify not only common manifestations of the disease, but also those that are comparatively rare-such as tuberculosis in pregnant women.
  
• Covers all clinical aspects of tuberculosis in children, including current practices on managing those infected with HIV.
  
• Provides details on how best to interact with the public health system in both industrialized and developing countries.
  
• Addresses the social aspects of tuberculosis and presents the latest advances on new and potential vaccines against tuberculosis.
  
• Offers the expertise of internationally recognized tuberculosis clinicians to provide you with well-rounded, global coverage.
  
• Features numerous illustrations to provide clear and detailed depictions of rare manifestations of tuberculosis.

Customer Reviews (1)

Not yet!
Congratulations, but I haven't recevied my book yet!
I'd like to ask for you help to locate the book.
Besides be a good literary composition, I've urgency in read it.
Thanks for your help.
José Jorge Pinheiro Guimarães
Manaus, january 18th. ... Read more

Product Description
The dramatic increase since the 1980s in the global prevalence of tuberculosis, a disease destined as recently as thirty years ago for complete eradication, is a story of medical failure. A pandemic whose geography defies simple categorization—it ranges from schools in the UK to prisons in Russia, from refugee camps in central Africa to affluent suburbs in North America—the 'new' tuberculosis is derived from a combination of different developments such as collapsing health-care services, shifting patterns of poverty and inequality, the spread of HIV, and the emergence of virulent drug-resistant strains.

This collection provides an international survey of current thought on the spread and control of tuberculosis, covering historical, social, political, and medical aspects. While the contributors may differ in their opinions over specific treatments or research methodology, all are agreed on the overriding thesis of the book—that the resurgence of disease is one of the most telling indictments of the failure of global political and economic institutions to improve the lives of ordinary people. ... Read more

Product Description
This dramatic memoir recounts one woman's experience with skeletal tuberculosis, which she contracted at the age of five in the 1930s. It recounts her next nine years living in tuberculosis sanatoriums where she underwent many treatments for the disease and was finally released when she was 14. Despite her subsequent disablement, she went on to marry and have three children, work as a micro-biologist, perform as a comedienne, and serve as an advocate for minority groups. By turns deeply affecting and hilarious, this memoir provides a glimpse into a still-dangerous disease and is a testament to the power of human perseverance and hope. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lot of information
First it talks about sufferers and then about the disease itself expounding the virus. Finally it talks about social issues surrounding the disease.
Full of useful information.
Subtracting two stars for what I felt was very stiff language.

Timeless book about the social causes and consequences of illness.
I could barely put this book down. One fascinating theme is the link between perceptions of the symptoms of TB and social class.When TB was primarily a white, upper-class disease, the symptoms were viewed with esteem.For example, pale, thin, frail people were thought to be particularly bright, creative, and appealing.But that is scratching the surface -- there is so much that is compelling and interesting about this book.

A social study of science
DuBos et al examine the social aspects of the TB epidemic, along with some of the biological factors.They show how TB was romaticized, how it was portrayed as a demon coming to rob the healthy of life, and how it sparked scientific invention - in particular the stethescope.The introduction is wonderful as it lays out the basic parts of the book.Words of advice: this book is best read as a whole from beginning to end, as the authors build on the arguments they make in past chapters. ... Read more

Product Description

Tuberculosis is a complicated medical condition that has a rich and important history, a distinctive social context, and an active and destructive present. The disease appears in Greek literature as early as 460 BCE and was a favorite of 19th-century novelists whose heroines often succumbed to "consumption." Through history, the development of TB diagnosis and treatment has been synonymous with events in the development of medicine.

Tuberculosis presents TB from the perspective of the people and events that shaped its past and the factors that influence its current global state. The book begins with an essay discussing the importance of the social factors that influence the transmission and progression of TB. The following eight chapters focus on disease-specific information, historical and biographical perspectives, influence on the arts, the current state of TB in the world, and future directions. Throughout, medical information about the disease is intertwined with a historical and cultural perspective to illustrate the state of the disease today.

Product Description
Until a decade ago, the conquest of tuberculosis seemed one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. The resurgence of TB in the wake of AIDS has to be understood, Georgina Feldberg argues, in the context of decisions the U.S. Public Health Service made, beginning in the 1930s, to prevent TB through improved hygiene and long-term treatment with medications, rather than program of BCG vaccination that Canada and many other countries adopted. Feldberg's aim is not to judge which was the right choice, but to explain why the U.S. rejected the vaccine and the consequences of that choice. To American physicians, TB, the conditions that fostered it, and the kind of people who got it were a direct threat to their own middle-class values, institutions, and prosperity. They prescribed vigorous social reform, and by the 1960s, they were convinced the strategy had worked. But, as the country's commitment to strong social welfare programs waned, the bacteriological reality of TB reasserted itself. Feldberg challenges us to recognize that the interplay of disease, class, and the practice of medicine can have unexpected consequences for the health of nations. The book is essential reading for students and professionals in public health, medicine, and the history and sociology of medicine. Georgina D. Feldberg is director of the York University Centre for Health Studies in North York, Ontario. She is coauthor of Take Care: Warning Signals for Canada's Health System. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating reading for all students of disease history
Probably the best book on the subject.Some of the logical flows seem a bit contrived, but nonetheless a deeply thought out thesis on the relationship between poverty and disease.A must! ... Read more

Product Description
One of the deadliest diseases healthcare workers fight today, tuberculosis (often called TB) infects the lungs of one-third of the world's population and kills about 2 million people a year. While scientific breakthroughs brought this bacterial disease under control during the 1960s to the 1980s, it was never completely eliminated. In the early 1990s, TB came back as a serious global threat. Not only has TB now spread to virtually every country on Earth, new strains of TB--which are resistant to the standard antibiotics used to cure it--have appeared. Learn what causes TB, how it spreads, why it is so difficult to treat, and more in this informative volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating account of the world's#1 infectious disease
In seven chapters, Yancey presents a clear understanding of tuberculosis, "the persistent enemy."With statistics, the author informs that TB is no longer a disease mainly among a poor or sickly population.It is affecting healthy middle class children and adults and is the top infectious killer in the world, above AIDS and pneumonia.It infects 1/3 of the world's population.

The challenge in eradicating this disease that damages the lungs and is highly contagious is that many strains of TB now are resistant to drug therapies that have previously been effective.Also, governments around the world do not all support prevention or agree on the most effective treatment.Although we have come a long way from treating the disease with butter on feet, ashes of swine dung mixed with raisin wine, wolf's liver, elephant blood, brown sugar and water, or syrup made from millipedes, there is still no one all-encompassing protocol that is affordable and effective for the population who are carriers of TB.

This well-researched book contains many interesting illustrations, such as infected cells, old public health posters, researchers in labs in the late 1940s, and maps of incidences of TB cases by state.Yancey personalizes some of the information by presenting cases of individuals and their families who are dealing with the disease.She even-handedly presents the concerns and issues and provides a chapter on action and awareness.Also included is a glossary, resources, further reading, index.

Useful as a source of information for school reports, Tuberculosis is also a book that is an interesting an enlightening history of how small the world becomes through the spread of disease. ... Read more

Product Description
For more than 150 years, until well into the twentieth century, tuberculosis was the dreaded scourge that AIDS is for us today. Based on the diaries and letters of hundreds of individuals over five generations, Living in the Shadow of Death is the first book to present an intimate and evocative portrait of what it was like for patients as well as families and communities to struggle against this dreaded disease. "Consumption", as it used to be called, is one of the oldest known diseases. But it wasn't until the beginning of the nineteenth century that it became pervasive and feared in the United States, the cause of one out of every five deaths. Consumption crossed all boundaries of geography and social class. How did people afflicted with the disease deal with their fate? How did their families? What did it mean for the community when consumption affected almost every family and every town? Sheila M. Rothman documents a fascinating story. Each generation had its own special view of the origins, transmission, and therapy for the disease, definitions that reflected not only medical knowledge but views on gender obligations, religious beliefs, and community responsibilities. In general, Rothman points out, tenacity and resolve, not passivity or resignation, marked people's response to illness and to their physicians. Convinced that the outdoor life was better for their health, young men with tuberculosis in the nineteenth century interrupted their college studies and careers to go to sea or to settle in the West, in the process shaping communities in Colorado, Arizona, and California. Women, anticipating the worst, raised their children to be welcomed as orphans in other people's homes.In the twentieth century, both men and women entered sanatoriums, sacrificing autonomy for the prospect of a cure. Poignant as biography, illuminating as social history, this book reminds us that ours is not the first generation to cope with the death of the young or with ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting but of Truly No Relevance
As Rothman, ruefully notes in her book there have been studies of medicine from the perspective of the doctor and from the perspective of the disease but not from the perspective of the patient.

Thus, Dr. Rothman sets out to do "a history of patienthood" and how being a patient changed over the course of time with respect to one single disease, TB or Consumption.

The problem is that her original sources are diaries, mainly of women but not exclusively. That by and of itself limits her subjects overwhelmingly to upper crust and educated NE families by and large. Overwhelmingly these are the well-off, relatively speaking. Theretofore, all of Rothman's democratic impulses are naturally very limited. The whole thrust of thesis is thus quite silly. This is not a history truly of patienthood, but of patienthood of the wealthy - of a small well-to-do segment of society.

What was it truly like to a patient with TB among the indigent and the poor? Rothman cannot really say for these people kept no diaries and if they did they were certainly not preserved a hundred and fifty years later in some library archives waiting for her to come find them.

Rothman gives us only the narrowest slice of what it means to be a patient.

Furthermore, this is a telling of history through anecdote. So she takes one, two, maybe 3 dozen diaries and summarizes what the people say in them. Who cares! To say these 3 dozen people are a representative sample (even among the upper crust educated elite of society) is downright silly.

It would be like someone reading 3 dozen blogs today on the net and saying they have a general sense of what society was thinking of the Iraq war. Who actually spends their time writing a blog? What is the motivation of those who write the blog? By definition, they are the people with extreme views, angry, disenchanted, frustrated, opinionated jerks. Represenative of nothing.

And this all leaves out the fact that we still have no clue as to biased selection of diaries that Rothman chose, potentially only using the one's that made her point (or only quoting passages from the diaries that support her thesis).

This is not history. This is not fact-telling. This is historical fiction writing.

If you want to understand disease read the work of Robert Fogel, Nobel Prize winning cliometrician. If you want to read historical fiction, go read Barbara Tuchman or Leon Uris.

This is just bad fiction with labored dense writing posing as history.

Fascinating, informative...and overwhelmingly sad
"[T]uberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.From 1800 to 1870 tuberculosis was responsible for one out of every five deaths.Paying little attention to geography, social class, or age, it struck rich and poor, young and old, and urban and rural residents."These statistics in Rothman's introduction are tragic enough.The narratives that follow are even sadder.

Consumption -- as it was known at the time -- was thought to be either inherited or the result of a sedentary life.(The communicable tubercle bacillus wasn't discovered until 1882.) Doctors focused on a three-pronged cure for their male patients of means:daily exercise, a good diet, and travel to a better climate.On the other hand, female patients were told to handle their domestic duties as best as possible and to get assistance from single female family members who could move in temporarily.Invalids and their families eventually dealt with the inevitable outcome and prepared for death.In the twentieth century, patients were sent off to sanatoriums.Chances are good that someone in your ancestry was affected. At the very least, they knew people who were.

This book is revealing because it is written from the patient's viewpoint and with the individuals in mind. Letters and diaries of consumptives show that people commiserated with fellow sufferers and exchanged news of symptoms and possible curative measures.The focus of the story-telling is thus very personal rather than medical.It makes for compelling reading.

"Living in the Shadow of Death" is mandatory reading for anyone interested in life in the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s.Genealogists and academic researchers in the humanities (especially literature and history) should put this title on their to-read list."The good old days" really weren't. ... Read more

Product Description
Clinical Tuberculosis remains an indispensable resource for respiratory physicians, infectious disease specialists, public health workers and other individuals involved in the management and control of tuberculosis worldwide.This established reference is a comprehensive accoutn of tuberculosis, providing up-to-date and authoritative information on all aspects of the disease.It gives practical guidance to health professionals who may be involved in any aspect of patient management or disease control, including chapters on epidemiology, pathology, immunology, disease presentation, diagnosis, treatment and management options.Specific consideration is given to the problems of TB associated with HIV infection, and issues of control relating to low and high prevalence countries respectively.The ongoing issues surrounding the BCG vaccination and preventive therapy are also covered, as are the increasing problems of multi-drug resistant strains and environmental opportunist mycobacteria. ... Read more

Product Description
A timely study recalls the effects of this devastating disease, which killed more than one billion people worldwide, examines the remarkable story of the dedicated doctors, chemists and bacteriologists who halted the course of this ferocious disease ... until the "old enemy" found a deadly ally in AIDS. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The once and future scourge
Because I grew up during a time when tuberculosis seem to have been (at least temporarily) conquered, I tended to think of it as a disease of the past, something that had slowly wasted away artists and languid ladies of society after many a year in a remote sanatorium, something almost romantic, more a relic of the nineteenth century than something that might threaten me.

However, one cannot read this extraordinary book without becoming fully imbued with the horror that is tuberculosis.Ryan shows in graphic language (and some photos that make one recoil), how the tuberculosis germ can eat away at human bodies, how it can poison and destroy lungs and internal organs, brain cells and bone, our skin, and indeed virtually every part of our body.One sees through Dr. Ryan's eyes a parasitic pathogen that "knows" its victims so well that one gets the sense that tuberculosis has been a cruel and grotesque tax on humankind since the first light of history, that tuberculosis is the price we've had to pay for learning animal husbandry, for agriculture, for civilization itself.

And then came the medical science of the twentieth century which developed antibiotics and chemotherapies that by the 1950s had tuberculosis so in retreat that many spoke of its eradication.Ryan brings the personalities that developed these cures and their struggles to life.We see them fight against not only the microbe but the nearly intractable belief held by most medical authorities that nothing could defeat the tuberculosis germ, that such efforts were doomed to failure, and anyone claiming otherwise was a charlatan and a fool.Ryan's book chronicles the story of the courageous, brilliant, and dogged people in the United States and in Europe--Gerhard Domagk, Rene Dubos, William Feldman, H. Corwin Hinshaw, Jorgen Lehmann, George W. Merck, Albert Schatz, Gylfe Vallentin, and Selman Waksman, to name a few of the most prominent--who actually developed a cure for this most horrible of diseases.It is a story of personal danger, intrigue, obsession, personality conflict and territorial spats, patent laws and priorities, money, jealousy and friendship--failure and eventual triumph set against the backdrop of two world wars.

How ironic the story is!How in direct contrast these two very human activities were: the heroic endeavor to cure disease, and the process of war--the latter a gross stupidity that served only to enhance the fertile ground of disease!As one reads one cannot help but exclaim, Oh, shame, shame on you humanity for your cruel and mindless stupidities!And hurrah for those who devoted their life to trying to understand the microbial world and its chemistry, to those who rose above the slaughter all around them and worked tirelessly to alleviate the pain and suffering of disease!

One wonders in reading this extraordinary story, how such grossly divergent behaviors by human beings can exist side by side: madness and the pursuit of knowledge.The nature of these schizophrenic bed fellows of humankind is what Ryan has really chronicled here.

But the story, after perhaps two decades of euphoria, takes a ominous turn sometime around 1978 with the incipient rise of "reactivation tuberculosis" and the "AIDS-tuberculosis syndrome" (pp. 395-396).Ryan shows that the struggle against TB, far from being over, is upon us once again with a new and terrible ferocity.He notes with alarm how the tubercular bacterium has continued to mutate against the drugs that once cured it while HIV-crippled immune systems allow the pathogen to once again run rampant through the bodies of the compromised.Already in our cities the tide against the "greatest killer of all time" has turned and the mortality rates are climbing.And in the developing nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the disease in combination with AIDS threatens entire generations.

Ryan estimates that 1.7 billion people in the world harbor the tuberculosis germ, an astonishing number.He calls this a "global time bomb" waiting to explode. (p. 404)He quotes health officials as claiming as long ago as 1991 that Africa was "already lost."

This is a beautiful and horrifying book that chronicles one of the greatest triumphs of medical science while making all too vivid the fact that "the ageless leviathan of terror" (p. 378) is still very much with us, and is likely to continue to evade our efforts to eradicate it. ... Read more

Product Description
The dramatic story of tuberculosis is told here in a straightforward and accessible style. It presents the stories of persons connected with the disease, either as victims, or as those who made contributions to our knowledge of it; in addition to these personal accounts, the book unfolds the history and explains the pathogenesis of TB. The re-emergence of tuberculosis as a major American public health hazard has focused much attention on this ancient disease. This book offers a comprehensive account of the disease from prehistoric times through to the present day, detailing the attempts to eradicate it completely. Its four separate sections (the spread of tuberculosis; its infectious nature; susceptibility to it; and methods of treatment) are linked through the device of presenting individuals' particular experience of the disease, whether as as victims, or as those who made contributions to our knowledge of it; in between these vignettes, the book unfolds the history and explains the pathogenesis of TB. A detailed medical glossary completes the volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The narrative isn't linear
I read this good book, here in Brazil.This book is concise and easy to read.It wasn't made for doctors, but for general public.I'm not a doctor.I'm an agronomist.
Some photos; all black and white.
The main failure of this book is to be non-linear.A chapter about tuberculosis today, is before a chapter about the discovery of bacterial origin of tuberculosis.
Among the best parts of this book, there's the proof that tuberculosis declined before medicines against it, were found in late 1940 decade.Better sanitarization, better food, pasteurization,etc. put tuberculosis in decline, since late XVIII Century.

An eye-opening history of a nearly forgotten plague
As a child that started grade school in the 1950s, I remember standing in lines for TB skin tests. Now, after reading this remarkable book and learning of the many luminaries in the arts, sciences, literature, politics, and the aristocracy that fell to this forgotten killer, I feelprofoundly lucky to be born after 1948. I'm amazed the story oftuberculosis is not more well known, for it's a story the deserves to betold, retold, and remembered. Another well-kept secret from the text isthat today TB still kills more people worldwide than AIDS and all of the tropical diseases combined. How did Dan Rather missed this scandal?

On alight note, it's interesting that a recent (I thought) ideal of beauty, theKate Moss "heroin" look, is really quite old. The text describedhow young and beautiful women were considered to be even more beautiful if they appeared to be pale and wasting away with TB--the"consumtive" look. Strange how history repeats its self. ... Read more

Product Description
Why does tuberculosis, a disease which is both curable and preventable, continue to produce over 50,000 new cases a year in South Africa, primarily among blacks? In answering this question Randall Packard traces the history of one of the most devastating diseases in twentieth-century Africa, against the background of the changing political and economic forces that have shaped South African society from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. These forces have generated a growing backlog of disease among black workers and their families and at the same time have prevented the development of effective public health measures for controlling it. Packard's rich and nuanced analysis is a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on South Africa's social history as well as to the history of medicine and the political economy of health. ... Read more

Product Description
This work places Emily Dickinson's poetry in a new setting, examining the many ways in which Dickinson's literary style was affected by her experiences with tuberculosis and her growing fear of contracting the disease. The author gives an in-depth discussion on 73 of Dickinson's poems, providing readers with a fresh perspective on issues that have long plagued Dickinson biographers, including her notoriously shut-in lifestyle, her complicated relationship with the tuberculosis-stricken Benjamin Franklin Newton, and the possible real-life inspirations for her "terror since September." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

From a lay person's viewpoint.
So Has A Daisy Vanished: Emily Dickinson and Tuberculosis by George Mamunes

Reading the title of this book, one would expect that it contains a treatise defending the unproven assumption that Emily Dickinson did suffer from the prevailing mortal disease of her time, tuberculosis.Instead, Mr. Mamunes assumes that this is a fact from the start and then proceeds to illustrate just how this disease and the social attitudes of the times are clearly seen in the changing forms and themes of Emily Dickinson's poetry and writings.
For the sake of complete disclosure, I would like to state that I have absolutely no credentials to review this book as a scholar or as a critic.Although I have enjoyed reading some forms of poetry, individual poems and an occasional poet at different periods of my life, I had neither read any of Emily Dickinson's poetry nor studied anything about her before opening this book.So please take all my comments with a grain of salt.
With some trepidation I began reading and, to my surprise, I found the author's style eminently readable, comprehensible and wonder of wonders, informative and entertaining.Mr. Mamunes separates the poet's life into phases that correlate with her age, living conditions and the stages of progression of her disease. Each section is prefaced by a short excerpt from a novel published during the time period being discussed.The dramatic scenes depicted in each excerpt parallel the circumstances in Ms. Dickinson's life and help to illustrate the prevailing attitudes and perceptions of Ms. Dickinson's contemporaries.Poems written at each phase of Ms. Dickinson's life are presented and the device mentioned above allows the reader to understand her poetry in the light of her state of mind considering the progression of her disease/tuberculosis, social circumstances and environmental influences.
Mr. Mamunes addresses several disputed "facts" about Ms. Dickinson's life including the identity of the man that she loved but never physically bonded with and her unconventional use of dashes that served as unspoken thoughts in the lines of her poetry. Again, I am not a Dickinson devotee or a scholar but I found all of Mr. Mamunes arguments very convincing.
I heartily recommend this volume.It is well written, well researched and engaging.I am certain that it is a significant addition to the previously published biographical and critical works about the poet, stimulating more discussions about the controversies that seemingly have been stirring for many years.

Larry Mendelsberg
... Read more

Product Description
"One of the most readable medical histories ever."—Sunday Express

"A gripping read, enlightening and moving by turns."—Evening Standard

"Like an experienced suspense writer, the author of this marvelous book reserves his good news until the end. . . . One of the additional pleasures of his book lies in itsvivid parentheses, case histories, even footnotes. . . . [it is] enlivened byDormandy's mordant wit and idiosyncratic style. . . . A fine book."—Anita Brookner, The Sunday Times

"A model of how medical history ought to be written . . . lucid in itsanalysis and perspicacious in its commentary."—Peter Ackroyd, The Times of London

"This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the hypochondriac. It is, however,a fascinating account of a disease which is probably as old as man himself."—Literary Review

"Dormandy writes extremely well, with a sharp wit . . . it is impossibleto do justice to the riches to be found in this book."—The Sunday Telegraph

The victims of tuberculosis (usually known as consumption) included not only Keats, The Brontës, Chopin and Chekhov, but members of almost every family. It was a killer on a huge scale.

The White Death is an outstanding history of tuberculosis.Thomas Dormandy's engrossing account of the search for a cure is complemented by a description of its complex natural history and by portraits of individual sufferers, including writers, artists, and musicians, whose lives and work were shaped (and often tragically curtailed) by the disease.But, tuberculosis is not just a disease of the past.In many parts of the world it is still a bigger killer than AIDS, while in America and Europe drug-resistant strains threaten its resurgence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

no title
This is a rad history if you have any interest in the subject, highly recommended. It is devoid of soft abstraction, fashionable theoretic apparatus, and similar wastage. It's repletely informed and documented, and usually fascinating. The style is distinctive but subdued and effortless.

The only (probable) error I could notice was the passing assertion that Domagk's own daughter was the first human to receive Prontosil. I have seen this claim elsewhere, but more detailed accounts of the development of Prontosil state that her treatment was in fact subsequent to the first several human trials.

Index
This book is loaded with information but it could have been much better indexed.I also wonder why no mention is made anyplace about Seaview Hospital in Staten Island, NY, which was the largest municipal TB hospital in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century, and contributed much in the fight against TB.Then again, maybe I missed it and Seaview is mentioned, but it's not indexed.

The White Death is a force to be reckoned with!
From Antiquity, tuberculosis has been a killer on a huge scale, ever-present yet lurking rather than epidemic; its explosion in the 1800s went hand-in-hand with industrialization, abetted by bad housing, endless work hours & poverty.

For the Victorians, who elevated illness to art forms, the victims of TB were the ultimate in pale & interesting; the roll call of tuberculous genius reads like who's who of artists & writers: Keats, Chopin, the Brontes; Robert Louis Stevenson, Chekhov, Orwell, to name only a few.

Thomas Dormandy has written an engrossing account of the amazingly complex social, artistic & natural history of this ubiquitous disease as well as a telling chronicle of the medical profession at its worst & best.

This is one vitally informative, compelling & erudite volume on an affliction that has been with us since we began burying our dead, drawing on walls & writing. Make no mistake, TB is with us still! It is now mutating upon the new vectors of HIV, prisons, orphanages & multidrug resistancy.

The White Death is an impressive & eminently readable history! Do check out my eInterview with this respected author - I think you will be as amazed as I!

The Best Work on the Subject
There have been some reasonably satisfying works written on the cultural aspects of tuberculosis, and others on the scientific struggle to understand and control the disease.What makes this work unusually rewarding is that Dormandy (a consultant pathologist and medical writer) possesses the ability and education to bring together TB's medical and cultural aspects.He is equally comfortable discussing the influence of TB on the German Lied tradition and the interaction between the disease organism and the immune system.

The White Death is particularly strong on TB's influence on European high and Bohemian culture and on the stories of individual scientists and doctors involved in research and treatment.Dormandy has a bit less patience for the bureaucratic history of public health and the political intrigues of academia, a feeling I share.I particularly enjoyed the opinionated and informative footnotes.

A Consuming disease
When the whole world seemed to be suffering with flu last winter I read andthoroughly enjoyed "Flu" by Gina Kolata. I caught the sickness bug (bad pun) and read several more social-history books about deadly diseases and living conditions in the past, and Dormandy's "TheWhite Death" was by far the best. We readers are all familiar with theidea of the limp, frail tubercular Victorian who is tragically going towaste away before his magnus opus is finished, but do we realise that untilfairly recently, tuberculosis was so common - in fact expected in certaincircles - that the wasted tubercular look was actually fashionable amongstthe artistic and indolent (early heroine-chic?)? This very readable bookcharts the long and difficult fight between the medical establishment andtuberculosis - a disease that wasn't fussy who it struck or where itstruck. Of course, the poor slum-dwellers didn't stand a chance, buthistory does not record their names.What is striking is how many wellknown figures it hastened to an early grave - some of the finest artists,writers and minds of Europe, including the Brontës, Keats, Modigliani,Chekhov, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and George Orwell. It alsorampaged through several royal households at various times. What made it socruel was its slowness and the way it toyed with its victims. Availed withall that quackery could offer, the patient could have several seeming"recoveries" before eventually fading. Dormandy describes some ofthe practises of doctors in their battle against tuberculosis - you willhave to read them for yourself! Gradually inroads were made by thescientific community but only after generations of sickness. Incredibly itwas a long time before the idea of quarantine caught on (in Italy)! Aninteresting and readable medical and social history that becomes morecompelling when you know that tuberculosis is again on the rise.Drug-resistant strains have been found, and it seems that whilst battlesmay have been won, the war may still be lost. ... Read more

Product Description

An annual death toll of 2 million, coupled with rising drug resistance, highlights the need for the development of new drugs, better diagnostics, and a tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. Addressing these key issues, A Color Atlas of Comparative Pathology of Pulmonary Tuberculosis introduces TB histopathology to the non-histopathologists, students, scientists, and doctors working, learning, and teaching in the field of TB. It contains 100 color photographs and illustrations that bring clarity to the information presented.

The atlas takes the unusual approach of covering multiple species histopathology, arguably the first and quite possibly the only resource to do so. It provides a simple, annotated, and visual presentation of the comparative histopathology of TB in human and animal models. The editors have compiled information that helps TB scientists to distinguish between the features of all major animal models available and to use them with their strengths and limitations in mind. The book provides guidance for selecting the best animal model(s) to answer specific questions and to test the efficacy of drug candidates.

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Customer Reviews (1)

TB through the ages.
This book is an excellent introduction to TB and what it does to the human skeleton.The authors, in their work with bones, are able to follow TB through the ages and into modern times.Rather than just being a textbook, The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis is a testament about a disease that hasn't gone the way of smallpox and is still a very real threat.

My only complaint was that it just wasn't long enough. ... Read more