For more than 150 years, until well into the twentieth century, tuberculosis was the dreaded scourge that AIDS is for us today. Based on the diaries and letters of hundreds of individuals over five generations, Living in the Shadow of Death is the first book to present an intimate and evocative portrait of what it was like for patients as well as families and communities to struggle against this dreaded disease. "Consumption", as it used to be called, is one of the oldest known diseases. But it wasn't until the beginning of the nineteenth century that it became pervasive and feared in the United States, the cause of one out of every five deaths. Consumption crossed all boundaries of geography and social class. How did people afflicted with the disease deal with their fate? How did their families? What did it mean for the community when consumption affected almost every family and every town? Sheila M. Rothman documents a fascinating story. Each generation had its own special view of the origins, transmission, and therapy for the disease, definitions that reflected not only medical knowledge but views on gender obligations, religious beliefs, and community responsibilities. In general, Rothman points out, tenacity and resolve, not passivity or resignation, marked people's response to illness and to their physicians. Convinced that the outdoor life was better for their health, young men with tuberculosis in the nineteenth century interrupted their college studies and careers to go to sea or to settle in the West, in the process shaping communities in Colorado, Arizona, and California. Women, anticipating the worst, raised their children to be welcomed as orphans in other people's homes.In the twentieth century, both men and women entered sanatoriums, sacrificing autonomy for the prospect of a cure. Poignant as biography, illuminating as social history, this book reminds us that ours is not the first generation to cope with the death of the young or with

Remarkably relevant. [ Living in the Shadow of Death] conveys a troubling sense of deja vu in a decade when we face both the AIDS epidemic and the recrudescence of tuberculosis itself; and it is important reading for those caught up in efforts to deal both effectively and humanely with either. -- June Osborn, former chair, U.S. National Commission on AIDS A fascinating and powerful book... compelling reading. Tuberculosis was a disease, now reemerging, that killed more Americans, young or old, rich or poor, than any other disease, until well into the twentieth century. It shaped our culture, determined careers, blighted lives. Rothman writes beautifully and with great sensitivity about the human condition. The book will, I believe, become a classic in the field. -- David E. Rodgers, Cornell Medical College

About the Author
Sheila M. Rothman is Research Scholar at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the Program on Human Rights and Medicine. She is author of Women's Proper Place.

Reviews
A 1994 Notable Book of the Year New York Times Book Review [A] remarkable book... Elegantly composed... It is written, and splendidly so, out of compassion for victims, respect for their courage and hope that their stories will enlighten us about current afflictions. Suffering is the books' compelling theme: not the genius of scientists but the pain and tenacity of the sick... [Rothman's] book is invested with a modestly humane hope that the past can teach us something useful... At stake is our collective civility as much as our health. -- Alan Trachtenberg New York Times Book Review [A] moving account of what is was like to live in the shadow of death. -- W. F. Bynum Nature This is great reading, an illness narrative that dramatically illustrates how an exceptional, atypical life can inform historical knowledge. Boston Sunday Globe [A] graceful and lucid history. Mirabella



Book Information
ISBN 9780801851865
Author Sheila M. Rothman
Format Paperback
Page Count 332
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 522g