One often wonders, as a teacher and practitioner, what one can do to impress upon medical students, nurses, and especially patients the grimness of the history of the world riddled at one time by tuberculosis. Gradually, thanks to the work of the author of this excellent volume and of other scientists, the destructive force of tuberculosis has been abated. The very gradualness of the change, however, makes it difficult to set up milestones or landmarks for students and it is especially difficult to convince students that at one time tuberculosis was the scourge of mankind.
Appearing on the 20th anniversary of streptomycin's first use clinically, this book becomes one of the living proofs which one can hand to a student to explain to him the inroads which this disease has made throughout human history. It is truly the end of an era of which we read in Dr. Waksman's highly