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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... Consumption and the Romantic Age PART TWO : THE 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 ...
... consumption , as pulmonary tuberculosis was commonly called , tracked the footsteps of young men and women and loomed over courting couples for as long as they lived . Con- tracted in childhood or adolescence , tuberculosis left its ...
... consumption opened a chapter on female health with traditional observations about preordained nature . “ God is not unjust and partial , " reflected Dr. Samuel Sheldon Fitch , " he has not made one to live one hundred and sixty years ...
... Index Medicus ( 1951 , 1952 ) under " tuberculosis " for articles citing the nitrogen and phosphorus retention and requirements for female adolescents . and popular book , Consumption , Its Relation to Man INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXV.
... Consumption , Its Relation to Man and His Civili- zation , Its Prevention and Cure , published in 1906 , was at great pains to eliminate what was called " phthisophobia , " a mindless fear of infection . Uncertainties about the spread ...
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 |