Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History - Hardcover

$30.00

Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History - Hardcover

Name: Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History - Hardcover
Brand: BooksCloud
SKU: 9781541768468
Price: 30.00 USD
Availability: InStock

by Vidya Krishnan

$30.00

Book Overview

The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its ancient origins to nineteenth-century epidemics to its modern reemergence amongst the global poor

"Krishnan is a powerful storyteller, and her accounts of frustration, suffering, grief and resilience are moving."―Wall Street Journal

It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others - rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just. For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body.

In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West.

The cure was never available to black and brown nations. And the tuberculosis bacillus showed a remarkable ability to adapt - so that at the very moment it could have been extinguished as a threat to humanity, it found a way back, aided by authoritarian government, toxic kindness of philanthropists, science denialism and medical apartheid.

Krishnan's original reporting paints a granular portrait of the post-antibiotic era as a new, aggressive, drug resistant strain of TB takes over. Phantom Plague is an urgent, riveting and fascinating narrative that deftly exposes the weakest links in our battle against this ancient foe.

ISBN	9781541768468
Author	Vidya Krishnan
Publisher	PublicAffairs
Genre	Education and History
Format	Hardcover
Published	February 2022
Language	ENG- English
Pages	320
Weight	1.0 lb
Target Audience	Adults
Print Size	Standard Print

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