This pre-WW-II, pre-penicillin, poster for Red Cross Christmas Seals captures the hopelessness that we all once felt in the face of tuberculosis. -- John H. Leinhard
My mother very clearly remembered a time in her childhood when every street in every neighborhood had at least one black memorial wreath on the door of a house where someone had died of tuberculosis.
I always thought TB was some quaint old thing, long gone. Then I kept seeing people coming to court from the Kane County Jail with masks on....then I went to Afghanistan and watched as we screened out dozens and dozens of local workers as being active TB carriers...ugh.
Posted by: Major John | June 01, 2007 at 09:15 PM
And now there's this Atlanta lawyer with a very virulent strain of it who's in quarantine and who may have infected dozens of people on trans-Atlantic flights.
Posted by: gail | June 01, 2007 at 09:39 PM
yeah, and everytime I hear that story some new interesting tidbit is added. Dude's father-in-law works for the CDC?
Posted by: maggie katzen | June 02, 2007 at 12:45 AM
It's the control of diseases such as TB that have allowed humans to contemplate smaller families of one or two children. With TB, flu, small pox,and Lord knows what else, larger families were required. Without them the children lost before age 20 could not be replaced so easily.
If this character's father-in-law worked with TB at CDC and he (the stricken one) still went on his globe hopping jaunt knowing he had TB.... Idiots.
Posted by: joated | June 02, 2007 at 07:02 AM
Didn't his doctor tell him that he was all clear? He could be around people and not worry about infecting them. No symptoms, clear chest X-rays, no coughing, not contagious.
Posted by: Ana | June 02, 2007 at 08:10 PM
Vulgar language during primetime TV is, is not okay
Posted by: amount beer in keg | August 11, 2007 at 12:17 PM