Description
- Pub Date : April 2022
- Author : Vidya Krishnan
- Publisher : Viking
- Category : Non-fiction
- Binding Type : Hardback
- NO. OF PAGES :314
- Mrp : 799
ABOUT THE BOOK
The 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 othersrich
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 folkremedies,
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.
Krishnan's original reporting paints a granular portrait of the postantibiotic
era as a new, aggressive, drug resistant strain of TB takes over.
Phantom Plague is an urgent, riveting and fascinating narrative that
deftly exposes the weakest links in our battle against this ancient foe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vidya Krishnan is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting
on medical science for the last 20 years. She has written for the Atlantic,
the LA Times, The Hindu (as their health and science editor) and for the
British Medical Journal.
