Newbery Honor author Jim Murphy (The Great Fire) and his wife and co-author, Alison Blank, begin their riveting, interdisciplinary biography of "the greatest killer of humans in the history of the world": tuberculosis, which Homo erectus carried out of Africa.
Ancient Egyptian mummies show evidence of the disease, and Greek physicians were the first to document its symptoms. TB spread through Europe, eventually intersecting with the creation of the stethoscope, the x-ray and antibiotics. The cramped quarters caused by the industrial revolution created the perfect conditions for spreading disease, and coincided with the sanatorium system. Stricken teens were taken from their families to live under a strict regimen for years at a time.
The authors detail many ineffective cures, such as the practice of collapsing a patient's lung in hopes of starving the germs of oxygen. Health laws, education campaigns and housing reforms have all been used to slow TB. Readers will be appalled to learn that minorities and the poor were often left untreated. Not until the 1940s did sick chickens lead to the discovery of streptomycin, the first effective cure for TB. Yet today, tuberculosis remains a worldwide threat. Young readers will appreciate the fascinating facts (such as the 15-pound Gambian pouched rat, trained to sniff out tuberculosis bacilli) and shocking statistics sprinkled throughout (in 1850, 75% to 90% of all people on earth carried the TB germ). The back matter reflects the authors' painstaking research. --Angela Carstensen, school librarian and blogger