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Author: Visit Amazon's Katherine Ott Page
ISBN : 0674299108
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From Publishers Weekly
Historian of science, medicine and society at the Smithsonian, Ott gathers threads from cultural history, politics, social commentary and medicine in her consideration of the history of tuberculosis. Her narrative is an uncomfortable reminder that the practice of medicine has always been fallible. The parallels of last century's tuberculosis epidemic with this century's AIDS epidemic are unmistakable and are drawn explicitly in the final chapter, which deals with the current "reemergence" of tuberculosis and its intersection with AIDS. After Robert Koch (in 1882) demonstrated that a bacillus was the cause of tuberculosis, the romanticized "consumption" was metamorphosed into a feared epidemic disease. As Ott weaves her story of tuberculosis from the lives of those afflicted by it and the society that felt compelled to battle it, flashes of insight emerge: Why the dark, plush, musty Victorian interiors were replaced by bright, spare, ventilated "modern homes." How medical education was transformed in the early 1900s. Although generally objective, in the final chapter Ott allows herself some politically correct grandstanding. A few minor medical misconceptions crop up in the narrative. Extensive references accompany each chapter, making this an excellent resource as well as an interesting read.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ott, an historian at the Smithsonian Institution, explores the changing cultural meanings of tuberculosis, supplementing the science-centered narrative of Frank Ryan's The Forgotten Plague (LJ 5/15/93). As Ott points out, 19th-century popular culture idealized "consumptives" as spiritual and artistic. Following Robert Koch's 1882 discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, patients were urged to surrender their lives to medical experts' spartan and regimented cures. The recent emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis in impoverished and isolated urban risk groups and the high-tech medical and scientific practice that attempts to identify and treat it has resulted in yet another metaphoric conceptualization. Ott's narrative expands Sheila Rothman's Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (LJ 1/94) by examining the changes in material culture?the scientific instruments, sick room equipment, and treatment facilities?that evolved as the germ theory of disease and the discovery of antibiotics transformed medical practice. Her work is a rewarding medical history. Recommended for scholarly and larger public libraries.?Kathleen Arsenault, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Direct download links available for Free Download Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870 Hardcover
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (November 1, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674299108
- ISBN-13: 978-0674299108
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Free Download Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870