The Forgotten Pandemic - Asimov Press

This essay by Kamal Nahas is the first in a two-part series on tuberculosis. The second part — focused on vaccines and medicines — will be published next Sunday, concluding Issue 04 of Asimov Press. “Each successive episode of bleeding left him weaker than before,” wrote Mary Doria Russell of Doc Holliday, the gunslinging gambler, in her eponymous book, Doc. Published in 1971, the book contains unsparing descriptions of Holliday’s deteriorating medical condition. “‘You get used to it,’ Doc always said. ‘You can get used to anything.’ Used to the gnawing pain; used to the sudden taste of iron and salt; used to the struggle to pull air in as blood from his lungs rose.” Doc suffered from tuberculosis, or TB, a bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Both deadly and storied, the disease has earned many monikers — consumption, phthisis, and “the white plague” or “white death,” owing to the paleness of those afflicted. It killed Frédéric Chopin, Henry David Thoreau, Franz Kaf

This essay by Kamal Nahas is the first in a two-part series on tuberculosis. The second part — focused on vaccines and medicines — will be published next Sunday, concluding Issue 04 of Asimov Press. “Each successive episode of bleeding left him weaker than before,” wrote Mary Doria Russell of Doc Holliday, the gunslinging gambler, in her eponymous book, Doc. Published in 1971, the book contains unsparing descriptions of Holliday’s deteriorating medical condition. “‘You get used to it,’ Doc always said. ‘You can get used to anything.’ Used to the gnawing pain; used to the sudden taste of iron a