Book ID: CBB981191824

At the Limits of Cure (2021)

unapi

Venkat, Bharat Jayram (Author)


Duke University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 304
Language: English

Can a history of cure be more than a history of how disease comes to an end? In 1950s Madras, an international team of researchers demonstrated that antibiotics were effective in treating tuberculosis. But just half a century later, reports out of Mumbai stoked fears about the spread of totally drug-resistant strains of the disease. Had the curable become incurable? Through an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India, Bharat Jayram Venkat examines what it means to be cured, and what it means for a cure to come undone. At the Limits of Cure tells a story that stretches from the colonial period—a time of sanatoria, travel cures, and gold therapy—into a postcolonial present marked by antibiotic miracles and their failures. Venkat juxtaposes the unraveling of cure across a variety of sites: in idyllic hill stations and crowded prisons, aboard ships and on the battlefield, and through research trials and clinical encounters. If cure is frequently taken as an ending (of illness, treatment, and suffering more generally), Venkat provides a foundation for imagining cure otherwise in a world of fading antibiotic efficacy.

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Reviewed By

Review Koyna Tomar (2022) Review of "At the Limits of Cure". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 677-678). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB981191824/

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Authors & Contributors
Janina Kehr
Venkat, Bharat Jayram
Kirchhelle, Claas
Rebekah Lee
Lee, S. H.
Jamieson, A K
Concepts
Tuberculosis
Disease and diseases
Public health
Medicine
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Prevention and control of disease
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Argentina
India
Great Britain
Canada
Africa, Sub-Sahara
Myanmar (Burma)
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
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