Tuberculosis in the Nineteenth Century

In David Barnes book, The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France, Barnes challenges the reader by questioning the way we see medicine. In the introduction of the book, Barnes first sentence creates a subtitle scare in the reader with the first few lines of “Tuberculosis is back. In most developed nations, a steady decline throughout most of the twentieth century reversed itself beginning in the mid­1980s, and cases of the disease have increased ever since” (Barnes 1). Barnes continues on and tells the reader of the disease, how it is contagious, how it was treated worldwide to begin with. This book is more a history of the cause and action to prevent tuberculosis rather than a history of the treatment of tuberculosis. Barnes wanted to figure out the answer of the question, “how does a society make sense of a widespread and deadly disease?”(Barnes 23). The author’s presentation is very clear and clean, as seen in the introduction, there is a general outline of each chapter telling what the chapter contains and where it is going. At this point of the book as a reader I am very intrigued to see how he answers his own thesis question, and I have been able to follow and understand him well.
As Barnes continues in the first couple chapters of his book, he tells the reader what events are going on in the beginning of the nineteenth century, this is when ''essentialist" explanations of tuberculosis predominated (27). He continues on and examines the early societal and epidemiological analyses of hygienists, concentrating especially on Villemin, the leading figure of the "party of hygiene" during the July Monarchy. Barnes also talks about the societies controversy of Villemin's 1865 experiments. These exp...

... middle of paper ...

...n with was how does society process a countrywide epidemic, throughout the book David Barnes did an excellent job in answering that. Barnes went through a plethora of ideas that touched on each step of how the outbreak affected society. Starting with social anxiety, redemptive suffering, and germ theory continuing with morality and mortality, and ending with remaking the working class. From what I knew about tuberculosis before reading this to now after, my knowledge has greatly enhanced. It has changed my perspective on thinking it was an old plague that wouldn’t affect me has changed greatly. Next time I think about getting my TB test I wont be complaining.

Works Cited

Barnes, David S. The Making Of A Social Disease : Tuberculosis In Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1995. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 5 Dec. 2013.