Phantom Plague
How Tuberculosis Shaped History
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Narrated by:
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Sneha Mathan
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By:
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Vidya Krishnan
About this listen
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...
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The Panic Virus is a gripping scientific detective story about how grassroots radicals, snake-oil salesmen, and cynical journalists have perpetrated the biggest health-scare hoax of all time. It explores what happens when the media treats all viewpoints as equally valid, regardless of facts, from parents who are convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism to right-wing radicals who believe that climate change is a myth
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Incredible thorough journey
- By Rachel Dewald on 03-22-11
By: Seth Mnookin
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Influenza
- The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?
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Important read
- By Kathryn C. on 12-21-18
By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
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Medical Apartheid
- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
- By: Harriet A. Washington
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
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Sobering... but necessary.
- By Dr. Pepper on 10-27-16
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How to Survive a Plague
- The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
- By: David France
- Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments.
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Read This Book!
- By Kay M Hawklee on 05-30-17
By: David France
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Pox
- An American History
- By: Michael Willrich
- Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the last century, a smallpox epidemic swept the United States. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern plantations to the immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the American empire. In Pox, historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continent-wide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the 20th century.
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Best book on smallpox
- By Chris M. White on 09-07-21
By: Michael Willrich
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The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
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thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
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Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
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A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
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The Birth of the Pill
- How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Gayle Hendrix
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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We know it simply as "the pill", yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic.
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Overall Excellent Read
- By Rachel on 04-02-22
By: Jonathan Eig
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The Good Death
- An Exploration of Dying in America
- By: Ann Neumann
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying.
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Ugh, so boring
- By Maranto on 05-13-19
By: Ann Neumann
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Unnatural Selection
- Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
- By: Mara Hvistendahl
- Narrated by: Tamara Marston
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in 10 years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have 24 million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. And gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia....
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Interesting idea but...
- By Seth P Dow on 07-30-15
By: Mara Hvistendahl
What listeners say about Phantom Plague
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Christina Jenkins
- 05-12-23
Thoughtful and Insightful
This was more than just a book on tuberculosis, but also a treatise on the socioeconomic structures of the global health system that allows diseases like tuberculosis to continue to thrive. The subjects that were discussed were clearly very well researched and presented in an easily digestible way, interposing statistics of disease with more personal stories of those afflicted with the disease. Very well done, and highly recommended.
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- Daniel V.
- 10-12-22
comprehensive
From myths to germ theory, to ill-conceived housing in developments to patton law and fighting to keep TB seen as a world crisis, I found the breakdown very interesting. It unfolded like a documentary. With a balance of treatment barriers and political policies it was an easy listen.
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- M. Flanigan
- 06-07-23
Excellent
An important book for everyone. Big pharma, big tech, and global governments and their effect on healthcare.
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- Ruby
- 01-25-23
More than expected
I was inspired to purchase book by an interview with the author. As the book progressed I was taken into more political strife than I had anticipated. That being said the book was informative and worth reading.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-03-22
More things change, more they stay the same
Given society's recent experience with the novel coronavirus pandemic, this book is a timely review of the intersection of contagious disease (namely tuberculosis) and medical history. The parallels between the response of society more than a century past to that highly infectious disease and today are eerie and timely. Krishnan does a marvelous job weaving these story elements together and making them relevant to the experiences nearly every human has had over the past several years. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the development of science, medicine, infectious disease, or is just looking to better understand the failings of today's society in dealing with Sars-Cov2. Even with my interest in these things, I was eager to learn of the fight to stem public expectoration (spitting positively forbidden) and the struggle health departments had in changing public behavior to limit the spread of disease. The blame placed on women for having too long of skirts for the spread of disease when it was men doing the spitting reveals that nothing has really changed with respect to victim shaming...that these fights are intergenerational...that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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- Kindle Customer
- 07-12-22
Disappointing.
I never write book reviews but this book is more of a rant than an insightful commentary.
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.
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