Autorentext

RENE DUBOS (1901-1981) was a distinguished microbiologist and commentator on the ecology of disease. Dubos’s other books include a standard biography of Louis Pasteur and several influential books on the environmental aspects of public health. His book Mirage of Health has been reprinted by Rutgers University Press. His wife, Jean Dubos–who had suffered from tuberculosis herself–collaborated on The White Plague.

Klappentext

A many-faceted history of tuberculosis which considers this disease from early times on as ignorance, and false gentility, and finally the romanticism of the 19th century shrouded the gravity of consumption. And from the individual tragedies of Keats and Shelley and the many literary lives in which tuberculosis was the pervading presence, this goes on to the history of the illness- the old beliefs and nostrums which give way to scientific fact with Koch's identification of the bacillus; the widening knowledge (although still conflicting theories) of diagnosis, susceptibility, resistance and environment; the many therapeutic practices involved in its treatment- nutrition, climate, surgery, rest, drugs; and finally the longer and broader view of tubercudlosis in terms of epidemics and mortality and populations, in terms of public health and prevention and control- to the point where today the death rate has been decreased- but the incidence has not been subdued..... A popular perspective, which reflects not only the course of the disease but the countries and societies in which it festered and the shadow it still casts over many lives in many lands. (Kirkus Reviews)

Inhalt

Foreword by David Mechanic
Introductory Essay: Dubos and Tuberculosis, Master Teachers by Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz
To Our Sources
Introduction to the First Edition
Part One: The White Plague in the Nineteenth Century
I The Captain of All the Men of Death
II Death Warrant for Keats
III Flight from the North Winds
IV Contagion and Heredity
V Consumption and the Romantic Age
Part Two: The Causes of Tuberculosis
VI Phthisis, Consumption and Tubercles
VII Percussion, Auscultation and the Unitarian Theory
VIII The Germ Theory of Tuberculosis
IX Infection and Disease
Part Three: Cure and Prevention of Tuberculosis
X The Evaluation of Therapeutic Procedures
XI Treatment and Natural Resistance
XII Drugs, Vaccines and Public Health Measures
XIII Healthy Living and Sanatoria
Part Four: Tuberculosis and Society
XIV The Evolution of Epidemics
XV Tuberculosis and Industrial Civilization
XVI Tuberculosis and Social Technology
Appendices
Bibliography and Notes
Index