This is the first nonfiction work by the Indianapolis author of several novels, including the best-selling The Fault in Our Stars. He is also a self-confessed depressive and suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In the first few chapters, he details how tuberculosis was viewed in the Middle Ages, including as an enhancer of feminine beauty, via weight loss and pallor, or as a stigmatized spiritual punishment. It was also regarded as a gift of the talented poets, writers and musicians, many of whom died of tuberculosis in their youth.
Following the discovery of the responsible bacillus by the disgraced Dr. Koch, attitudes changed slowly, but there was little effective treatment and a lot of ineffective treatment recommendations, until the late 1940s.
Much of the later part of the book concerns the continuing inequality of modern treatments in the era of multidrug resistance, and the huge toll that tuberculosis continues to extract in many countries, still killing more than a million people per year. The difficult choices of where to invest in health care include a Chilean physician who had to chose between feeding four thousand starving Haitians and developing treatment for multidrug resistant T.B. at home. Such difficult choices about the »social determinants of health » feature prominently in much of the book.
This is a very intelligent and thoughtful detailed analysis with bundles of information, and an interesting global and very human perspective. It is written in simple language that almost anyone should be able to understand. I am going to recommend it for our book club’s discussion.
5/5
Thanks, Isla.
The Passionate Reader 