Spitting Blood: The history of tuberculosis Posts about Download The Book Spitting Blood: The history of tuberculosis for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
Revue de presse
Helen Bynum has written a book not only full of diverting asides but also of urgent importance. (
Richard Horton, Guardian)
Présentation de l'éditeur
Tuberculosis is characterised as a social disease and few have been more inextricably linked with human history. There is evidence from the archaeological record that Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its human hosts have been together for a very long time. The very mention of tuberculosis brings to mind romantic images of great literary figures pouring out their souls in creative works as their bodies were being decimated by consumption. It is a disease that at various times
has had a certain glamour associated with it.
From the medieval period to the modern day, Helen Bynum explores the history and development of tuberculosis throughout the world, touching on the various discoveries that have emerged about the disease over time, and focussing on the experimental approaches of Rene Laennec (1781-1826) and Robert Koch (1842-1910). Bynum also examines the place tuberculosis holds in the popular imagination and its role in various forms of the dramatic arts.
The story of tuberculosis since the 1950s is complex, and Bynum describes the picture emerging from the World Health Organization of the difficulties that attended the management of the disease in the developing world. In the meantime, tuberculosis has emerged again in the West, both among the urban underclass and in association with a new infection - HIV. The disease has returned with a vengeance - in drug-resistant form. The story of tuberculosis is far from over.
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Spitting Blood The history of tuberculosis 9780199542055 Spitting Blood The history of tuberculosis and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle Learn moreSpitting Blood The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum A disease of poor the under privileged and the vulnerable TB patients in Srinagar Kashmir Photograph Farooq Khan EPASpitting Blood The History of Tuberculosis Book Review Traces of DNA in ancient bones discovered in various places around the planet suggest that Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been in evidence for as long as Homo sapiens Spitting Blood The History of Tuberculosis Helen Bynum Review Spitting Blood The History of Tuberculosis User Review Trena Penney Goodreads This book takes a fascinating topic and makes it quite tedious
Very well written -- in the English style, Spitting Blood encompasses the history of medicine as well. Particularly in the early chapters the author chronicles the physician's struggle identifying the various tubercles and various organ systems involved as one disease. The inclusion of Boerhaave, Laennec and Koch makes for delightful reading. The later chapters go into the re-emergence of TB with HIV and high levels of drug resistance. MDRTB, XDRTB and TDRTB refer to multiple resistant and extensive resistance and resistant to everything cases mostly in countries in which the health care system has collapsed. We tend to forget that one out of three in the world are infected with TB, mostly contained, but none the less TB kills 1.4 million a year world wide. There were some 8.7 million new or reactivation TB cases in 2011; it rivals malaria. If you like real pathology and and an infectious disease challenge, this is a must read.
Par Clancy Hughes
- Publié sur Amazon.com
"The Emperor of All Maladies" (see my review on Amazon) was written by an incredibly gifted medical scientist and writer, and it established in my mind an impossibly high standard for any other history of disease. For me "Emperor" sat alongside Clio, the muse of history, high on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, never to be approached.
Yet I love medical history and so on I went, picking up many such new books and usually soon afterwards laying them down only partially read, especially those written by non-scientists and/or authors who could not write particularly well and were just cranking out books on hot subjects, books that would soon be forgotten.
Finally though, my wandering in the wilderness around Parnassus has been rewarded. "Spitting Blood" (surely there could have been a better title) may not actually sit right beside "Emperor" and Clio, but it is very high up there indeed. And if "Emperor" had never existed then "Spitting Blood" would be establishing its own very high standard of excellence (imagine Andy Roddick's career had Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic never existed).
Plus, "Spitting Blood" does something more, and unusual, and very, very important.
But before getting into that let's first evaluate "Spitting Blood" (ugh, there's that title again!) on a more fundamental level. There's no need here to recite what TB is or what a basic history of it needs to encompass. The vast majority of potential readers of "Spitting Blood" -- unless they think this book is a compilation of chain saw and axe murders -- already know at least a little about TB. Given TB's history and ubiquitousness, who doesn't? The bottom line is that "Spitting Blood" establishes an excellent foundational history of TB in a solid, easily read, polished manner, and covers all the TB bases in the process. The tour of the foundation is never boring. To the contrary it is entertaining and enlightening with numerous very engaging tangents. And you will definitely learn a lot and the information all seems quite reliable. I am not a physician but for years I have served on the clinical trials review board of one of the largest academic medical centers in the country. Our chair is a worldwide leader in TB research. Some of it has rubbed off on me, at least enough for me to know -- in terms of popularized TB history and medicine -- what is real and reliable and what is not. And not once from that standpoint did I have any question about what I was reading in "Spitting Blood".
So what is new and different here, in this book? Why make a special effort to read it, as I think you should, and as I would strongly encourage you to do?
Because it rings, loudly and clearly, a fire bell in the night. Every single lay person I know -- and on medical topics I know and interact with a lot of highly educated lay people -- does not know or underestimates what TB is doing in the world today. Many or most think we have it almost buried with a stake through its heart. Wrong. TB has crawled back out of its grave (if it was ever really in one) and it is now -- if I may abuse W.B. Yeats here for just a moment -- a rough beast, its hour come round at last after tens of thousands of years, and is moving its slow thighs toward us with its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. Every year this rough beast kills approximately 1,400,000 people and infects about 8,700,000 more, each year.
Given those figures why is there not a worldwide alarm? Simple. It is primarily a disease afflicting the poor and the vulnerable, which is horrible. Not entirely the poor and the vulnerable but mostly. So, for many in the world who are not poor and vulnerable, TB is mostly out of sight, out of mind. For now, anyway. But not for always, and likely not even for long. After you buy this book and just before you begin to read it, google Edgar Allan Poe's very short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and read or re-read it. 'Tis quickly done. And you will get the picture: namely, those in the world who are not poor and vulnerable and thus are less susceptible to TB can run but they can't hide -- not with the massive movement of today's populations, not with such a volume of international air travel, not with so many people being cycled through thoroughly infected prisons, not with such neglect of the international trajectory of this disease, and most especially not when TB is now changing itself in order to negate our defenses and gain entry into the black-and-red chamber of Prince Prospero's palace where it, as the Red Death, will find so many of those who are not its usual poor and vulnerable victims. That is, unless we recognize the threat for what it is and take intelligent long term action. And the various action plans that are needed are not, to use football terms, clever triple reverse plays but rather Vince Lombardi fundamental blocking and tackling, and the vital ingredient is mostly a matter of commitment and will on our part.
THAT is what this book does so compellingly well. That is why I call it a fire bell in the night. If ever a book needed to be made into a movie, and that movie be shown in every single theatre of the world, free of charge, this book is it. Everyone needs to get this message and get it now, and begin acting on it. To that end the author, Helen Bynum has not only handed us an absolutely riveting book to read, but much more importantly she has performed an enormous public service for the citizens of the planet.
So I urge you to buy this book now, and some additional copies as well to give to the opinion leaders and change agents you know. Having said that I feel I must also say the following so that you may be assured of where I am coming from when I write such an endorsement. Just to be very clear, I do not know the author and until this book
I had never heard of her. Nor do I know anyone who knows her. Nor has Amazon asked me to write this. My views expressed above are entirely independent of anyone or anything. I am as enthusiastic as I am simply because this is inherently a great book and additionally because it deals with an enormous and highly threatening medical and social problem.
Kenneth E. MacWilliams
Portland, Maine
Par Kenneth E. MacWilliams
- Publié sur Amazon.com