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Rating: 
Summary: The White Death is a force to be reckoned with!
Review: From Antiquity, tuberculosis has been a killer on a huge scale, ever-present yet lurking rather than epidemic; its explosion in the 1800s went hand-in-hand with industrialization, abetted by bad housing, endless work hours & poverty.For the Victorians, who elevated illness to art forms, the victims of TB were the ultimate in pale & interesting; the roll call of tuberculous genius reads like who's who of artists & writers: Keats, Chopin, the Brontes; Robert Louis Stevenson, Chekhov, Orwell, to name only a few. Thomas Dormandy has written an engrossing account of the amazingly complex social, artistic & natural history of this ubiquitous disease as well as a telling chronicle of the medical profession at its worst & best. This is one vitally informative, compelling & erudite volume on an affliction that has been with us since we began burying our dead, drawing on walls & writing. Make no mistake, TB is with us still! It is now mutating upon the new vectors of HIV, prisons, orphanages & multidrug resistancy. The White Death is an impressive & eminently readable history! Do check out my eInterview with this respected author - I think you will be as amazed as I!
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Work on the Subject
Review: There have been some reasonably satisfying works written on the cultural aspects of tuberculosis, and others on the scientific struggle to understand and control the disease. What makes this work unusually rewarding is that Dormandy (a consultant pathologist and medical writer) possesses the ability and education to bring together TB's medical and cultural aspects. He is equally comfortable discussing the influence of TB on the German Lied tradition and the interaction between the disease organism and the immune system. The White Death is particularly strong on TB's influence on European high and Bohemian culture and on the stories of individual scientists and doctors involved in research and treatment. Dormandy has a bit less patience for the bureaucratic history of public health and the political intrigues of academia, a feeling I share. I particularly enjoyed the opinionated and informative footnotes.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Work on the Subject
Review: There have been some reasonably satisfying works written on the cultural aspects of tuberculosis, and others on the scientific struggle to understand and control the disease. What makes this work unusually rewarding is that Dormandy (a consultant pathologist and medical writer) possesses the ability and education to bring together TB's medical and cultural aspects. He is equally comfortable discussing the influence of TB on the German Lied tradition and the interaction between the disease organism and the immune system. The White Death is particularly strong on TB's influence on European high and Bohemian culture and on the stories of individual scientists and doctors involved in research and treatment. Dormandy has a bit less patience for the bureaucratic history of public health and the political intrigues of academia, a feeling I share. I particularly enjoyed the opinionated and informative footnotes.
Rating:
Summary: Index
Review: This book is loaded with information but it could have been much better indexed. I also wonder why no mention is made anyplace about Seaview Hospital in Staten Island, NY, which was the largest municipal TB hospital in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century, and contributed much in the fight against TB. Then again, maybe I missed it and Seaview is mentioned, but it's not indexed.
Rating:
Summary: Index
Review: This book is loaded with information but it could have been much better indexed. I also wonder why no mention is made anyplace about Seaview Hospital in Staten Island, NY, which was the largest municipal TB hospital in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century, and contributed much in the fight against TB. Then again, maybe I missed it and Seaview is mentioned, but it's not indexed.
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