The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis

by Thomas Dormandy

The victims of tuberculosis (usually known as consumption) included not only Keats, The Brontës, Chopin and Chekhov, but members of almost every family. It was a killer on a huge scale.

The White Death is an outstanding history of tuberculosis. Thomas Dormandy's engrossing account of the search for a cure is complemented by a description of its complex natural history and by portraits of individual sufferers, including writers, artists, and musicians, whose lives and work were shaped (and often tragically curtailed) by the disease. But, tuberculosis is not just a disease of the past. In many parts of the world it is still a bigger killer than AIDS, while in America and Europe drug-resistant strains threaten its resurgence.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medicine, Science, Medical, Microhistory, Biology

433 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Thomas Dormandy was a retired consultant chemical pathologist and professor who worked at the University of Brunel and Whittington Hospital at the University of London. Dormandy wrote several books in addition to over three hundred scientific articles. In 1999 Dormandy published The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis. In it he combined scientific and sociological history to create his account of tuberculosis and various people's struggle with the disease primarily in the United States and Europe.

Reviews of The White Death were mixed among the critics. Muiris Houston, writing in the British Medical Journal, commented that Dormandy "has a knack of explaining technical matters" as he "weaves literature, social history, pharmacology, and epidemiology into an entertaining tale." In a Lancet review, Anne Hardy agreed that the book was "clearly written," but felt it "offers little to stimulate the interest of those already familiar with … the history of tuberculosis in general." Writing in the English Historical Review, Helen Jones thought the outline of the book was unclear. "There is no explanation at the outset of how the chapters are organized, and no sense of what will follow from chapter to chapter," Jones commented. A critic concluded in a Publishers Weekly review, however, that the "prodigious research and an anecdotal style blend to make this a fascinating foray into the history of medicine."

Reviews

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not light reading. Its discussion only briefly touches on pre-modern Europe, but there's plenty in America and modern Europe to keep it grim.

Covers the effects on the wide-spread populations who had it, as best can be determined from the records. (Better more recently, to be sure.) World War I caused an uptick in deaths all over. In neutral Denmark, for instance -- apparently the increased demand for food exports drove it, because it reversed after the British blockade and the consequent decrease in food prices.

Prominent victims and their sufferings, which we have in more detail -- Keats, D. H. Lawrence, Orwell among the most prominent, but plenty of others.

The real advances and the false ones.

The stethoscope, for instance, was an early one; it enabled the development of percussion as a diagnostic tool, which could be used frequently without danger.

The discovery of the bacillus, which managed in time to wear down insistence that it was hereditary.

Sanatoriums, which were THE treatment for decades in spite of only one experiment to test their efficiency. (And that involved rabbits; the scientist took three sets, inoculated two of them, let one inoculated bunch run wild on an island, and kept the other two in nasty conditions, and the conditions were worse than inoculation.)

X-Rays and the first early diagnoses. (They used to think massively advanced TB was early.)

The discovery of how to detect TB and the massive testing in the United States of milch cows, which caused rates of bovine TB to plummet -- and were only slowly adopted in other countries.

Antibiotics, and the subsequent discovery that many apparent TB cases, weren't, and the development of further problems.

Full of grim information.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because some genealogical research had uncovered a number of relatives many generations ago who had died of tuberculosis, and I wanted to learn more about the disease. It was accessible, even funny at times, sometimes jarring in its colloquial and judgmental tones. It was tremendously informative, and I learned a lot about the disease and its history, pathology, and epidemiology. I wished it had described the disease, briefly, and succinctly, in terms of what caused it, how it progressed, etc. This was all pieced together from biographical sketches that were very interesting, but I found myself still seeking out Wikipedia and other sources to identify the causes, symptoms, and progression of the disease articulated succinctly.

[Steven Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely exhaustive account of the history of tuberculosis, also called TB, consumption, phthisis, the White Death, and many other things. This book covers, in depth, many things, including:

--famous people who've died of TB, including the Brontes, George Orwell, Chekhov, Keats, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley, Vivian Leigh, and a great many others;

--the sanatorium cure, from Saranac Lake to the money-making places in squalor;

--the highs and lows (of which there were more lows) of TB's medical history, from ancient Rome to the 1990s and 2000s.

--the history of medicines to fight it, and the people behind them;

--the individual doctors who made advances (or who thought they did);

--the public reaction to it, mostly in England and America;

--the socio-economic classes in both countries, and how they were adversely effected;

--the distressing news of TB's prevalence today, as an MDR--a multi-drug resistant epidemic again waiting to happen, and not just in HIV / AIDS patients.

(In fact, a very good book still can be written about the HIV / AIDS epidemic, and the history of the disease, as well as the men and women who were involved in its present-day cocktail--and in its history of bias.)

This is a sobering book about viruses, medicines and the fight between the medical profession and these microbes, with the human population struggling in the middle. It occurs to me that it's only a question of when, and not if, we'll have a worldwide population effected by the MDR-resistant strains of TB, flu, HIV / AIDS and other viruses. If England in the Middle Ages was a petri dish of the Plague and anthrax at the same time--two viruses that killed over 33% of Europe in just four years--then why can't we have such a simultaneous combination of viruses today, on a global level?

[Gwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The operative word in the title of this book is "A," as in "A history of tuberculosis," for it most certainly is not THE history of the disease. It is really two books in one, the author having intertwined stories of famous writers, artists, and musicians who suffered from tuberculosis and the long and convoluted medical history of the disease. This intermingling of two very different histories was not effective and made reading the book a long slog. I should have been able to tell when I saw the voluminous digressions masquerading as footnotes that this book would take a long, circuitous route to cover the history of the disease, primarily in Europe and America, although other countries are mentioned in passing.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really should have been structured better. Instead it bounces around between famous tubercular cases and repeated attempts to understand or cure "phthisis." In fact I don't think it's until midway through the book that I really get a good description of how tuberculosis works. That aside, this is packed with information.

[James Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about one of the great forgotten killers. Excellent mix of medical history and the cultural history of the disease. One gripe: the footnotes were so full of interesting material that they were pretty much too large to read. More ought to have been put into the text.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books shows the depth and breadth of the author's medical and cultural knowledge, but could have been organized better. It is neither chronological or topographical, but jumps between the two narrative structures. I certainly learned a lot about the disease and its impact on the artistic cannon (literary, musical, and visual arts) of Western Europe in the last 300 years. I do think the author could have spent more time explaining how improving public sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition were doing more to lessen the impact of TB than the entire sanitoria movement or the introduction of radical surgeries at the end of the 19th century

[Carol Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tuberculosis was a scourge to be dealt with, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Efforts to contain it resulted in history changing ideas and even styles. I found myself fascinated by the many artists, writers, and even actors who fought against this disease and lost. I recommend this book to anyone interested in history and humankind.

[Alysha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll be honest, I skimmed the last 150 pages. This book was well-researched but all over the place. It could have used a better editor.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an informative read. I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of the forms of tuberculosis and their effects.

I did start to lose interest a little in the later part of the book in the 1940s as it was less relevant to my research.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I preferred Jean Dubos' White Plague, written around 1950, which covers most of the same examples more succinctly.

[Brittany · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was looking for a more scientific text while this was more of a social history of TB.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating subject, well researched, drily presented.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very exhaustive and comprehensive look at TB’s effect on history, culture, and society over time. The book suffers from a disjointed narrative and frequent asides and length footnotes on cultural figures, making it a pain to slog through.

[Guera25 · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only all medical histories were so deftly told. I was never ever bored or mired in dense swaths of jargon. Even the voluminous footnotes contained nuggets of interest.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction, so not an easy read, but it is a good overview of the history with emphasis on the European and American experience.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject but badly written.

[Mahaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so fascinating and informative and I didn’t get bored even though it’s dense & long.

[Nikolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5