Tweet
Source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...cs-health.html
April 25, 2013
A New Life for a Deadly Disease
Posted by Thomas Levenson
You can hear it before you see it. Most of the time, it starts with a wracking cough. Damage to the lungs advances; if infection enters the bloodstream, it may spread throughout the body. Then the patient grows weak, and as the infection advances, the body seems to melt away. When the end comes, as it does for more than a million each year, death arrives like a train wreck of blood and phlegm and spit. It used to be called ?consumption,? or ?the White Death.? Don?t think of Camille, lounging in soft focus whilst romantically fading away. Tuberculosis is a ferocious killer...
April 25, 2013
A New Life for a Deadly Disease
Posted by Thomas Levenson
You can hear it before you see it. Most of the time, it starts with a wracking cough. Damage to the lungs advances; if infection enters the bloodstream, it may spread throughout the body. Then the patient grows weak, and as the infection advances, the body seems to melt away. When the end comes, as it does for more than a million each year, death arrives like a train wreck of blood and phlegm and spit. It used to be called ?consumption,? or ?the White Death.? Don?t think of Camille, lounging in soft focus whilst romantically fading away. Tuberculosis is a ferocious killer...