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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... developed a respect for the mys- tery of this disease , and its complex transactions with the envi- ronment . Both authors of this classic volume , The White Plague : Tubercu- losis , Man , and Society , had a personal as well as an ...
... developed in The White Plague were to define the scientific , environmental , and humanistic positions that were the mark of Dubos's enormous influence on the thinking of the educated public , as well as on scientists ranging in ...
... develop structures and func- tions adaptive to local peculiarities . And he understood , and el- oquently explained that " health and happiness cannot be abso- lute or permanent values , however careful the social and medical planning ...
... developed drug - resistant strains underscored the potential for medical di- saster and the need for therapeutic prudence . As René and Jean Dubos traced the history of tuberculosis in human societies , the events they examined moved ...
... developed out of a painstaking study of illness in many patients , from which the pathology of each particular disease has been generalized . For example , say Jane and John each has a case of measles . Their individual illnesses no ...
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 |