000			01454nam a2200157 4500
020			_a9780670096886
082			_a616.995 _bVID/P
100			_aVidya Krishnan
245		0	_aPhantom plague _bHow tuberculosis shaped history
260			_aGurugram _bPenguin Random House India _c2022
300			_aviii, 302p.
520			_aThe definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world. It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others-rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just. For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body. In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West. The cure was never available to black and brown nations. And the tuberculosis bacillus showed a remarkable ability to adapt-so that at the very moment it could have been extinguished as a threat to humanity, it found a way back, aided by authoritarian government, toxic kindness of philanthropists, science denialism and medical apartheid.
650			_apublic health
650			_ainfectious diseases
942			_cBK
999			_c76351 _d76351