history books

[Guest guest]

I recently read some books on the history of medicine and research.

_Microbe hunters_. This mid-1920s set of biographic sketches apparantly

enjoys a semi-classic status. Well, it's highly inaccurate and the

style is terrible. I must say I enjoyed it anyway. I'm pretty partial

to the subject. But since it's so inaccurate, you know, what did I

learn from it that I can believe is actually true? - nothing.

_ Ehrlich, scientist for life_. This was not too spectacular. But

nothing really wrong with it.

_ Ehrlich bio by his personal secretary_. I forget the real title.

Nothing too overwhelming going on here.

_The white death: a history of tuberculosis_. This is the best history

of anything I've ever read. It's impossibly exploratory and well

researched, nicely written, and devoid of any repetition or hazy

abstraction. It has a fair amount to teach about the history of

medicine and research that really helps put the modern scene in

perspective. I also learned some new stuff about TB, not surprisingly.

Dormandy has some other books out too. He's clearly awesome.

_Tuberculosis: the greatest story never told: the human story of the

search for the cure for tuberculosis and the new global threat_. Very

awesome. This goes into fair detail about the discovery and development

of the first radically successful antimicrobials. It's fast reading,

and just slightly on the light side, but good.

_Gerhardt Domagk: the first man to triumph over infectious diseases_. I

didn't read this. It's written in or translated into some kind of

incredibly defective english. I've never seen anything remotely like it.

_Living in the shadow of death: tuberculosis and the social experience

of illness in America history_. I read a few chapters of this. It has

some information, interlarded with fashionable academic goo. Round

about the third mention of people psycho-socially-blah blah

constructing their personal narratives, etc, I was like,

aaawwmmmmmm..., life's really ticking away here, I should probably do

something rewarding while I'm alive, alphabetize my sock drawer,

something like that.