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
Results 1-5 of 76
... 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 Theory of Tuberculosis IX Infection and ...
... Infection and Disease PART THREE : CURE AND PREVENTION OF TUBERCULOSIS 94 111 x The Evaluation of Therapeutic Procedures 131 XI Treatment and Natural Resistance 139 XII Drugs , Vaccines and Public Health Measures 154 XIII Healthy Living ...
... infection . The third examines some of the concerns about tuberculosis that surfaced after the introduction of anti- biotics — once the control of contagion required less public vigi- lance and attention to personal hygiene . It is over ...
... infection . Tuberculosis , however , was already a less ominous disease for the audience that read The White Plague ... infected with it . Economic and social conditions , the Duboses stressed , were critical factors in its transmission ...
... infection . These parallel histories , the first examining the complex social environment that generated the conditions of disease , and the second celebrating the growth of scientific knowledge about the biology of tuberculosis , added ...
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 |