Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stunningly good history, 2 Jun 2002
By A Customer
A page turner about TB? Doesn't sound very convincing, but this really is such a book. I lost hours of sleep to it. Dormandy talks about the scientific and medical history of TB (not always the same thing - as he shows) in a way that is thorough and informative for the general reader. If the book were no more than that it would worth anyone's attention. However, he also treats us to 200 years of the cultural history of TB - its social, psychological and business aspects. And, if that isn't enough to get you reading, he also provides lots of closely examined case studies of artists, writers and musicians whose lives were shaped or shortened by TB. The author is a medical man by profession, but clearly has never heard of "the two cultures" since he moves effortlessly from slide preparation to Rilke and back again. He writes like man of culture too - this is effortlessly stylish. There are always things that you wish he had included, but I can think of nothing that I wanted excluded - even some of the descriptions of the conditions which caused TB or the ghastlier habits of those trying to cure it. (Quite a few whom, in their turn, died from it.) So - what's the connection between Breton folklore and TB, between the cherished privileges of London printers and TB, the changing status of Califormia and TB, the plays of Checkov and TB? Read Dormandy and find out.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The White Death is a force to be reckoned with!, 29 April 2001
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! ...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stunningly good history of a very important disease, 7 Jan 2000
By A Customer
In the history of diseases none is more important than tuberculosis, and this an extremely comprehensive and well written history of that disease. Its greatest merit is that it is the first complete account of the many treatements which were used before the discovery of streptomycin in 1947, and of such worrying facts as the emergemce of resistance to modern treatments. It has that rare quality amongst academic books on the history of medicine that it will appeal to, and be understood by, not only specialists in the field but by the general educated public. Strongly recommended.
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