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Contagion and Confinement: Controlling Tuberculosis along the Skid Road

Amazon.com Price:  $38.60 (as of 12/04/2019 11:07 PST- Details)

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Description

Most historians of tuberculosis have focused on the sanatorium era of the early twentieth century, losing interest in the disease with the discovery of curative antibiotics in the 1940s. In Contagion and Confinement, Barron H. Lerner offers the first in-depth look at the history of tuberculosis keep watch over in the antibiotic era, providing a vital account of this neglected chapter in the history of the disease. He argues that the new antibiotic drugs, slightly than being a simple panacea, if truth be told highlighted the complex social problems that continued to predispose people to tuberculosis and interfere with its remedy.

The most controversial strategy used by American health officers to keep watch over tuberculosis used to be forcible detention. Since 1903, Lerner notes, health departments have locked up tuberculosis patients whose behavior presented a public health threat. The usage of Seattle’s Firland Sanatorium as a case study, he specializes in the surprisingly Up to date use of detention between 1950 and 1970. Even if Firland planned to use confinement only as a last resort, Lerner explains, the facility detained nearly 2,000 patients, most of them alcoholics from Seattle’s famous “Skid Road.” In retrospect, it is clear that Firland staff members overused detention. But Lerner also finds that they worked hard to give a boost to the lives of the alcoholic patients society had forgotten.

Given the resurgence of tuberculosis and the renewed use of detention in the 1990s, Contagion and Confinement raises issues that are both timely and controversial. Even if modern public health officials are duly concerned with civil liberties, they still have great authority to detain tuberculosis patients who do not take their antibiotics. Up to date studies show that such persons are most likely to be homeless, HIV-positive, or drug users. Society is still struggling, Lerner concludes, to balance public health concerns with respect for patients.


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