Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History
Categories: Health, Fitness & Dieting, History
Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History is by Indian health journalist Vidya Krishnan. Krishnan traces tuberculosis from the nineteenth century to the present, describing how the disease shaped colonialism, urban planning, medicine and literature, and how the discovery of its cause by Robert Koch changed public health. She then turns to India, where the disease still kills hundreds of thousands each year, and examines how inequality, drug-resistant strains and failures of policy keep it alive.
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- John Green: “From Phantom Plague by Vidya Krishnan. It’s probably my favorite overall history of TB because it’s approachable and readable, but at the same time very rigorously researched.”