Discovering Tuberculosis looks at key places, developments, and ideas in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that explain the staying power of tuberculosis in both the past and the present: First, a probing look at race and TB in east Africa, South Africa, and American Indian country from the turn of the twentieth century to World War II; next, from the “Golden Age of Medicine” in the years just before and the three decades after the war, a detailed exploration of the development and rollout of a nearly useless vaccine on American Indian reservations and in India, followed by a caut ... More

Discovering Tuberculosis looks at key places, developments, and ideas in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that explain the staying power of tuberculosis in both the past and the present: First, a probing look at race and TB in east Africa, South Africa, and American Indian country from the turn of the twentieth century to World War II; next, from the “Golden Age of Medicine” in the years just before and the three decades after the war, a detailed exploration of the development and rollout of a nearly useless vaccine on American Indian reservations and in India, followed by a cautionary tale of the development of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Kenya and elsewhere; and finally, the tragic story of the resurgence of TB in the era of HIV/AIDS. Even though racial explanations for the disease’s prevalence have been cast aside, the world’s largest vaccine campaign was launched, antibiotics that cure the disease have been developed, and the effects of HIV on TB have been accurately predicted, Discovering Tuberculosis makes clear that the considerable effort put into combating the disease has never been enough to overwhelm this still powerful killer.