The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis

"General readers will find much of interest in Dormandy's stories and anecdotes"
—the Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"One of the most readable medical histories ever."
--Sunday Express

"A gripping read, enlightening and moving by turns."
--Evening Standard

"Like an experienced suspense writer, the author of this marvelous book reserves his good news until the end. . . . One of the additional pleasures of his book lies in itsvivid parentheses, case histories, even footnotes. . . . [it is] enlivened byDormandy's mordant wit and idiosyncratic style. . . . A fine book."
--Anita Brookner, The Sunday Times

"A model of how medical history ought to be written . . . lucid in itsanalysis and perspicacious in its commentary."
--Peter Ackroyd, The Times of London

"This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the hypochondriac. It is, however,a fascinating account of a disease which is probably as old as man himself."
--Literary Review

"Dormandy writes extremely well, with a sharp wit . . . it is impossibleto do justice to the riches to be found in this book."
--The Sunday Telegraph

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.

For the Victorians, who elevated illness to art forms, the victims of TB were the ultimate in pale & interesting; the roll call of tuberculous genius reads like who's who of artists & writers: Keats, Chopin, the Brontes; Robert Louis Stevenson, Chekhov, Orwell, to name only a few.

Thomas Dormandy has written an engrossing account of the amazingly complex social, artistic & natural history of this ubiquitous disease as well as a telling chronicle of the medical profession at its worst & best.

This is one vitally informative, compelling & erudite volume on an affliction that has been with us since we began burying our dead, drawing on walls & writing. Make no mistake, TB is with us still! It is now mutating upon the new vectors of HIV, prisons, orphanages & multidrug resistancy.

The White Death is an impressive & eminently readable history! Do check out my eInterview with this respected author - I think you will be as amazed as I!
April 30, 2001

The White Death is particularly strong on TB's influence on European high and Bohemian culture and on the stories of individual scientists and doctors involved in research and treatment. Dormandy has a bit less patience for the bureaucratic history of public health and the political intrigues of academia, a feeling I share. I particularly enjoyed the opinionated and informative footnotes.
January 14, 2001