Spitting Blood

Book excerpt: "Few diseases have been more inextricably linked with our past than tuberculosis. The ancient Greeks called it phthisis or consumption, names still familiar in the early twentieth century. They knew that coughing up or spitting of blood were bad signs. Through the Medieval Period to the modern day, Helen Bynum explores the history and development of TB throughout the world, touching on the various discoveries that have emerged about the disease, and focusing on the clinical and experimental approaches of Rene Laennec (1781-1826) and Robert Koch (1842-1910). Therapies included miraculous touching, bleeding, travel, vaccines, sanatoria, open-air therapy, and surgery, although none proved successful. A real cure finally arrived after World War II, with anti-tuberculosis drugs, characterizing a new optimism about science, health, and society. Although concerns about TB faded away in the mid-twentieth century, the disease has now returned with a vengeance. Bynum describes the emerging picture from the World Health Organization of the difficulties in managing new drug-resistant forms of the disease that have established themselves in the developing world, and in poorer parts of large cities worldwide. The story of tuberculosis, it seems, is far from over."--