White Plague 
TB, Disease both a source of & a motive for knowing whta we do not know.
incidence of Tuberculosis in the world, 1997.
1. Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis mostly attacks the lungs, however it can also attack many parts of the body such as the kidney, the lymph nodes, brain and the spine.
2. Tuberculosis (TB) is the world's leading infectious killer of young and middle-aged adults, causing 26 percent of avoidable deaths in the developing world.
3. René and Jean Dubos, The White Plague, 1952.
How did knowledge of TB change based on the role of diagnostic practice, instrumentation and experimental research from one period to another?
- Diagnostic practice, instrumentation and
- Research versus testing
- communication from one physician to another.
- Two Sects: Reason and experience, theoreticians versus practitioners of medecine. Which was correct?
Essay
“The God in the Machine that devoured my Illusions ”
by
Joseph Siry
The story of understanding the causes, treatment and containment of disease reveals several indecisive roles, in the development of science, of descriptive versus experimental evidence, diagnostic techniques and instruments for the prognosis of conditions, the social context of public health, nutrition, and exposure.
The development of biological science, in a comos of cause and effect was slow to catch up to planetary sciences and even chemistry:
- descriptive versus experimental evidence,
- techniques and tools for the diagnosis of conditions,
- the social context of public health, nutrition, and exposure.
Last week's themes revised in light of The White Plague:
Loss, death as the passageway from which there is no return
simplicty: does environment or contamination by exposure to sickness cause disease?
complexity: contagionists versus environmentalists may both be correct because the etiological agent of infection is an organism with its own specific ecological demands, genetics and nutritional behavior that exposes the limitedness of our descriptive techniques, our tools and our vocabulary for accurately describing health.
defining the rhetoric of multiple causes
The rhetoric of the technological sublime and the visions of a supplicant nature, do or do not originate in the absence of the Renaissance in America's brief past.
A. Knowledge: phthysis, diagnosis, prognosis
B. Symptoms: pertussis was confused with tuberculosis
C. Theory: four humors
D.
E. new means to decide, ..
F. Is either how technology works or the knowledge our tools allow us to verify restricted by the questions we are creative enough to ask?
1. Applied science or technology is the way we use what we know
2.The body of knowledge that we can know
3.The means we have (tools and technology) or method used to reveal our errors.
Those are the three things Feynman argues are the characteristic traits of what McCloskey called a systematic description of material and physical, social and human, literate and metaphorical knowledge.
where Marx left off in the labyrinth of interpreting technology and knowledge of nature. Here the quest is to reveal the hidden meaning of our entanglements with nature, technology and fear, but in the realm of health and living conditions.
Yellow Fever, malaria, pellagra, venereal disease, smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague, and melancholia were all --just to name some-- the help mates of tuberculosis in making modern society one in which death and sickness stalked all ages, but the young and aged especially leading to high mortality and morbidity rates.
Since the Renaissance threat of plague and disease steeped side by side with the twin illusions of providence and plenitude.
Conditions of urban, rural and commercial and industrial life fostered ecological ignorance of the actual biological conditions in which we live.
Currently our beliefs in progress and providence --then as now -- led people to blame the devil and sin for the existence of disease. Thus shame and sickness became so associated in the mind that today we still blame the victim of disease for their own unhealthy conditions, when there is an absence of informative clues as to a proper diagnosis.
These chest x-rays show advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. There are multiple light areas (opacities) of varying size that run together (coalesce). Arrows indicate the location of cavities within these light areas. The x-ray on the left clearly shows that the opacities are located in the upper area of the lungs toward the back..
Common problem in diagnosis before 1900 and x-yas were the confusion of symptoms with related, but different diseases.
This protection furthers two competing benefits, the promotion of commerce and citizen access to hunting, coppice (wood) and fishing. Private property rights over the public trust is severely limited by this sovereignty held by the states, or in Europe by national legislative bodies.
Serious declines in wildlife due to the destruction of land, water and air represents a serious threat to agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, ocean fisheries, and even now the world's climate balance.
Contact
J. Siry,
Guide
Terms
Pertussis is a highly communicable disease occurring mostly in children and teenagers that is caused by Bordetella pertussis. Symptoms are initially those of nonspecific URI followed by paroxysmal or spasmodic coughing that usually ends in a prolonged, high-pitched, crowing inspiration.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that causes inflammation, the formation of tubercules and other growths within tissue, and can cause tissue death. The appearance is typical for chronic pulmonary tuberculosis but may also occur with chronic pulmonary histiocytosis and chronic pulmonary coccidioidomycosis. Pulmonary tuberculosis is making a comeback with new resistant strains that are difficult to treat. Pulmonary tuberculosis is the most common form of the disease, but other organs can be infected.
Date: 19 January 2008
