For more than a century, readers have pondered the strangebeginning to one of the most haunting poems in theEnglish language, "Requiem." Who has not wondered how apoet can seem to welcome his own death. Scotsman RobertLouis Stevenson died of a disease so poorly understood in hisday that over a few decades its preferred name changed threetimes, from "phthisis" to "consumption" to "tuberculosis." Acentury later, we have reliable scientific facts on this "old"poet-killing disease—we know for one that Mycobacteriumtuberculosis now infects 1.9 billion people, nearly a third ofthe world's population (nearly 2 million deaths each year). Buthuman suffering is still difficult to quantify
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