The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man and Society / Edition 1

by Jean Dubos, David Mechanic, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz

Overview

In 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813512242
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1987
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	277
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

RENE DUBOS (1901-1981) was a distinguished microbiologist and commentator on the ecology of disease. Dubos’s other books include a standard biography of Louis Pasteur and several influential books on the environmental aspects of public health. His book Mirage of Health has been reprinted by Rutgers University Press. His wife, Jean Dubos-who had suffered from tuberculosis herself-collaborated on The White Plague.

Table of Contents

Foreword by David Mechanic
Introductory Essay: Dubos and Tuberculosis, Master Teachers by Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz
To Our Sources
Introduction to the First Edition
Part One: The White Plague in the Nineteenth Century
I The Captain of All the Men of Death
II Death Warrant for Keats
III Flight from the North Winds
IV Contagion and Heredity
V Consumption and the Romantic Age
Part Two: The Causes of Tuberculosis
VI Phthisis, Consumption and Tubercles
VII Percussion, Auscultation and the Unitarian Theory
VIII The Germ Theory of Tuberculosis
IX Infection and Disease
Part Three: Cure and Prevention of Tuberculosis
X The Evaluation of Therapeutic Procedures
XI Treatment and Natural Resistance
XII Drugs, Vaccines and Public Health Measures
XIII Healthy Living and Sanatoria
Part Four: Tuberculosis and Society
XIV The Evolution of Epidemics
XV Tuberculosis and Industrial Civilization
XVI Tuberculosis and Social Technology
Appendices
Bibliography and Notes
Index