Product Description

A timely study recalls the effects of this devastating disease, which killed more than one billion people worldwide, examines the remarkable story of the dedicated doctors, chemists and bacteriologists who halted the course of this ferocious disease ... until the "old enemy" found a deadly ally in AIDS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81822 in Books
• Published on: 1992-07-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 482 pages

From The Publisher
An important book! (Judged non-fiction book of the year). The New York Times.

As exciting as a detective novel ... Dr Ryan tells an important and moving story. His book should be compulsory reading for those who ignorantly or dishonestly deny the power of science to contribute to human welfare. Anthony Daniels, The Sunday Telegraph. All power to Ryan. This (book) is just what is needed ... indeed fascinating ... The world is very short of people willing and able to help in the struggle against tuberculosis. This book could help. Paul Nunn, New Scientist. Dr Ryan's book is gratifying reading, written at the pace of a mystery thriller and styled as a psychodrama, yet remarkably accurate in scientific detail. Dr Jerome Groopman, Wall Street Journal. I read with absorbing interest, not only because the author tells the story well ... Much in this book testifies to the author's acute perception of the disease's nature. John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph.

From the Author
How a tiny group of very unusual people found the cure.
Tuberculosis is the greatest infectious killer in history. In this century and the previous one it killed an estimated thousand million people. Half way through this century, experts and the public alike thought the cure would never be found. In fact it was found by the most unlikely group of heroes, none of them tuberculosis experts and only half of them medically qualified. Their discovery of the cure changed history. You might imagine how surprised I was to discover that their story had never been told. I travelled about the world talking to the people who had played their parts in it - and what an incredible story it proved to be. Lehmann, in Sweden, was a real-life Sherlock Holmes. Domagk in Germany was arrested by the Gestapo. Albert Schatz in America took his work on honeymoon with him. It was a great privilege for me to write this book. Then, while I was writing it, the plague came back to haunt both the developed and developing world.

Customer Reviews

Great science book
Even if you don't like science books this is a riveting read. The book charts a period in history that many people will have never seen- a diagnosis of TB was almost as good as a death sentence prior to the arrival of modern antibiotics. Being told you had tuberculosis invoked a real sense of terror in people as they knew they were to face a long unpleasant death- "the consumption".
That sounds awful but the book has a very powerful sense of human accomplishment over Tuberculosis- from the very begginnings of identifying the bacterium to the modern triple therapy antibiotic regimens. One of the great challenges for the scientists was not just defeating the microbe, but convincing a highly sceptical medical community that their drugs actually worked. This is in some ways understandable as for many years magic bullet after magic bullet kept arriving purporting to be a cure only to be outed as another quack treatment (people used to have their lungs collapsed to "rest" the lung). All this quackery was going on whilst the real scientists were struggling to get their work recognised.
I like my science books, and I know a story about TB sounds dull but I couldn't put this one down.