The Remedy, Thomas Goetz
The Remedy, Thomas Goetz
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The Remedy
Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis

Author: Thomas Goetz

Narrator: Donald Corren

Unabridged: 9 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/03/2014


Synopsis

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 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mindy

When I read the premise of this book, I was intrigued. What could Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have to do with Robert Koch's efforts to cure Tuberculosis? Not a lot, as it turns out. The effort of the author to hang the story on the current popularity of Sherlock Holmes turns this otherwise interesting an......more

Goodreads review by Maria

“The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.” Hippocrates The history of medicine is a fascinating one and of very ancient......more

In the nineteenth century twenty-two out of every thousand people died each year, more than 2% of the population– today only 5 out of a thousand people die each year. In the nineteenth century the average lifespan was thirty-six years – today it’s about eighty. The biggest killer in the nineteenth c......more