
Phantom Plague
How Tuberculosis Shaped History
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $22.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sneha Mathan
-
By:
-
Vidya Krishnan
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 others - rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it. 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.
Krishnan’s original reporting paints a granular portrait of the post-antibiotic 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.
©2022 Vidya Krishnan (P)2022 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...








![A Planet of Viruses [Third Edition] Audiobook By Carl Zimmer cover art](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51trQIyFJfL._SL240_.jpg)









comprehensive
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thoughtful and Insightful
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
More things change, more they stay the same
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
More than expected
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
TB, and eespecially MDRTB in particular is a curse on humanity. So what's new?
Life is imperfect and unfair and the author response is to indulges in moral indignation rather than suggesting solutions.
This book is not a history of TB, unfortunately.
Disappointing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.