The Remedy
Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The riveting history of tuberculosis, the world’s most lethal disease, the two men whose lives it tragically intertwined, and the birth of medical science.
In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB—often called consumption—was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy—a remedy that would be his undoing.
When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event. Touring the ward of reportedly cured patients, he was horrified. Koch’s “remedy” was either sloppy science or outright fraud.
But to a world desperate for relief, Koch’s remedy wasn’t so easily dismissed. As Europe’s consumptives descended upon Berlin, Koch urgently tried to prove his case. Conan Doyle, meanwhile, returned to England determined to abandon medicine in favor of writing. In particular, he turned to a character inspired by the very scientific methods that Koch had formulated: Sherlock Holmes.
Capturing the moment when mystery and magic began to yield to science, The Remedy chronicles the stunning story of how the germ theory of disease became a true fact, how two men of ambition were emboldened to reach for something more, and how scientific discoveries evolve into social truths.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Wired executive editor Goetz (The Decision Tree) offers an intriguing medical and literary history based on "accidental partners in a profound social shift toward science and away from superstition." Robert Koch, a meticulous and ambitious German country doctor-turned-scientist, isolated the bacteria causing TB and, Goetz writes, in doing so "offered a template" not only for medical science but for "all scientific investigation." Physician and Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle also viewed "science as a tool," and Koch's work in microbiology "provided the template" for Doyle's fictional detective's fascination "with minuscule detail." Though his scientific work remains an important legacy, Koch never achieved the fame he sought in finding a cure for TB. Yet, Goetz notes, "Koch's science became a kind of remedy nonetheless," changing the perception of the disease as "something that could be understood and defended against." Ironically, Doyle, though an admirer of Koch, would ultimately help debunk Koch's failed theory that an injection of "lymph" could cure TB. But this pair's fascinating, convergent stories have much more in common, as Goetz aptly demonstrates that both Koch and Doyle were doggedly inquisitive men who discovered that neither germs nor crime are any match for science.
Customer Reviews
Very entertaining
This book is equally entertaining and pertinent for those men and women of science as well as for non-scientific readers. Very accurate descriptions.
Remedy
Fascinating. Brings to life real people trying to cure humanities greatest diseases.