The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France

by David S. Barnes

In this first English-language study of popular and scientific responses to tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France, David Barnes provides a much-needed historical perspective on a disease that is making an alarming comeback in the United States and Europe. Barnes argues that French perceptions of the disease―ranging from the early romantic image of a consumptive woman to the later view of a scourge spread by the poor―owed more to the power structures of nineteenth-century society than to medical science. By 1900, the war against tuberculosis had become a war against the dirty habits of the working class.

Lucid and original, Barnes's study broadens our understanding of how and why societies assign moral meanings to deadly diseases.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Medicine

Hardcover

First published December 14, 1994

Reviews

[Robin Redden · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book (more a textbook than a non-fiction read), Barnes chronicles the history of cultural, medicinal and political responses to tuberculosis during and around the Belle-Epoch period in France (the last decade of the 19th century). He walks the reader thru the early "consumptive" or romantic perception of TB (which affected women of the Sarah Bernhardt type) to the later view that the poor, immoral and alcoholic (mostly men) were the ones affected and that the more marginalized people were the cause of it's transmission. This time frame covers both before and after germ theory and Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacteria. Barnes's book echoes Susan Sontag's essays on how and why societies assign moral meanings to disease.

TB remains a significant disease in third world countries and is making a resurgence in the US today. Poverty remains the overriding and underlying cause of this resurgence, i.e. homelessness, malnutrition, drug abuse and alcoholism are factors which suppress the immune system and are more prevalent among the poor. (Interestingly, only about 10% of people who have been exposed to the tubercle bacillus exhibit symptoms.) Barnes argues that the best approach to fighting TB and other diseases is to fight poverty and increase access to health care. Medicine alone (and several strains of TB are today resistant to antibiotics) cannot eradicate TB.

I recommend this book if you are a fan of French history and/or the history of medicine.

[Natalie Metcalf]

Read this for my History class !