The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man, and SocietyIn The White Plague, René and Jean Dubos argue that the great increase of tuberculosis was intimately connected with the rise of an industrial, urbanized society and--a much more controversial idea when this book first appeared forty years ago--that the progress of medical science had very little to do with the marked decline in tuberculosis in the twentieth century. The White Plague has long been regarded as a classic in the social and environmental history of disease. This reprint of the 1952 edition features new introductory writings by two distinguished practitioners of the sociology and history of medicine. David Mechanic's foreword describes the personal and intellectual experience that shaped René Dubos's view of tuberculosis. Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz's historical introduction reexamines The White Plague in light of recent work on the social history of tuberculosis. Her thought-provoking essay pays particular attention to the broader cultural and medical assumptions about sickness and sick people that inform a society's approach to the conquest of disease. |
From inside the book
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... CAUSES OF TUBERCULOSIS vii xiii XXXV xxxvii 11 18 28 44 Vi Phthisis , Consumption and Tubercles 69 VII Percussion , Auscultation and the Unitarian Theory of Phthisis 77 VIII The Germ Theory of Tuberculosis IX Infection and Disease.
... caused lobar pneumonia . The search for an en- zyme that could do the task led him to the study of swamp soil , and ultimately to the discovery of tyrothricin , a source of the first commercially produced antibiotics . Waksman , his ...
... caused up to 25 percent of all deaths reported , and early in the twenti- eth century , when Americans were generally ... cause of death or disability during the critical ages of fifteen through forty - five . ' During that time , the ...
... caused by tuberculosis was interlocked with the industrial and urban transformations of the modern nation ... causing tuberculosis carried the work of many earlier investigators to a successful conclusion . Critical questions raised by ...
... causes . Whatever the exact reason or prejudice , the idea of a single cause for a di- sease that affected the lives of so many people was not readily accepted . But if the cause of tuberculosis is less debatable when The White Plague ...
Contents
The Captain of All the Men of Death | 3 |
Death Warrant for Keats | 11 |
Flight from the North Winds | 18 |
Contagion and Heredity | 28 |
Consumption and the Romantic Age | 44 |
Phthisis Consumption and Tubercles | 69 |
Percussion Auscultation and the Unitarian Theory of Phthisis | 77 |
The Germ Theory of Tuberculosis | 94 |
Treatment and Natural Resistance | 139 |
Drugs Vaccines and Public Health Measures | 154 |
Healthy Living and Sanatoria | 173 |
The Evolution of Epidemics | 185 |
Tuberculosis and Industrial Civilization | 197 |
Tuberculosis and Social Technology | 208 |
Appendices | 229 |
Bibliography and Notes | 235 |