The making of a social disease : tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France
"In this study of popular and scientific responses to tuberculosis in 19th-century France, the author provides a historical perspective on a disease that is making an alarming comeback in the United States and Europe. Barnes argues that French perceptions of the disease - ranging from the early romantic image of a consumptive woman to the later view of a scourge spread by the poor - owed more to the power structures of 19th century society than to medical science. By 1900, the war against tuberculosis had become a war against the dirty habits of the working class. Barnes's study aims to broaden understanding of how and why societies assign moral meanings to deadly diseases."
Print Book, English, ©1995
University of California Press, Berkeley, ©1995