Flurin Condrau and Michael Worboys (eds). Tuberculosis Then and Now: Perspectives on the History of an Infectious Disease, Montreal and Kingston, London: McGill-Queen's/Associated Medical Services Studies in the History of Medicine, Health and Society, 2010. pp. x + 243. dollar29.95. ISBN 978 0 77 353601 2.

摘要

The WHO'S declaration of tuberculosis as a global emergency in 1993 encouraged renewed interest in the history of tuberculosis, but as Linda Bryder, Flurin Condrau and Michael Worboys explain in their introduction to Tuberculosis Then and Now, research on pulmonary tuberculosis has long been central to the social history of medicine. If national histories of tuberculosis encapsulate many of the historiographical approaches that have characterised medical history over the last thirty years. Tuberculosis Then and Now draws attention to new methodological perspectives to deepen our understanding of the history of the disease and to suggest ways in which historians can speak to contemporary policy issues. To achieve this, Tuberculosis Then and Now focuses on the experiences of patients, the public and activists and on the contingent character of anti-tuberculosis policies. Although individual chapters examine familiar issues and theories, such as the sanatorium, disease and identity, class and blame, and epidemiology, though often in new contexts, Tuberculosis Then and Now equally introduces readers to new ways of thinking about institutions, patient narratives and policy making.