Phantom Plague

January 3, 2022
Journalist Krishnan debuts with a wide-ranging history of tuberculosis and a stark warning that the disease is mounting “a frightening comeback.” Starting in the 1800s, Krishnan documents anxiety in England and America over tuberculosis, then known as consumption, and details the contributions made by doctors Ignaz Semmelweis, Joseph Lister, and Robert Koch to the acceptance of germ theory and the eventual development and mass distribution of antibiotics that greatly reduced tuberculosis deaths in the middle of the 20th century. Krishnan then shifts focus to modern-day India, where the colonial and postcolonial development of Mumbai created overcrowded and unsanitary conditions ripe for tuberculosis to propagate and spread. She also explains how the weakened immune systems of HIV-AIDS patients in the 1980s and ’90s provided the bacterium with ideal circumstances for proliferation, how the “overuse of misuse” of antibiotics and the existence of “clinical deserts” in poorer parts of the world have allowed drug-resistant tuberculosis to spread, and how groups including the World Health Organization try to contain disease outbreaks in the face of conflicting national goals and commercial interests. Shot through with tragic and inspiring stories of patients and doctors who have battled against the disease, this is a bracing look at what might be the next public health catastrophe. Agent: Kelly Falconer, Asia Literary Agency.

Starred review from June 1, 2022

Entrenched images of tuberculosis as a bygone killer of Romantic poets and antiquated source of superstitions that inspired Dracula are thoroughly explored and even more thoroughly subverted in this politically aware history of a far-from-historical disease. Health reporter Krishnan writes with exceptional journalistic clarity but doesn't hesitate to catch and hold listeners by the heartstrings. Through Krishnan's stories about patients' struggles to obtain treatment, we learn that corporate greed has done as much to keep TB alive and increasingly drug-resistant as had the centuries of ignorance before widespread acceptance of germ theory. Sneha Mathan's mellifluous, evenly paced narration turns pained as she reads these personal tragedies. Krishnan details and soundly condemns the policies that have spread this localized plague, but laments that it may be too late to prevent yesterday's global pandemic from becoming tomorrow's. VERDICT Recommended for all public libraries, this beautifully narrated title puts an ongoing public health crisis in its proper historical context and argues articulately and persuasively against the pharmaceutical patents that have helped it proliferate.--Lauren Kage

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