I took almost no pictures yesterday, so these are from earlier in the week. First, the garden of my neighbor down the street. I think that's a peony? I didn't know they turned such bright colors, but there you have it.
Not a lot of activity around here yesterday. I finished John Green's book about tuberculosis, always an uplifting subject (ha!) but honestly quite interesting. It's not something I've ever given much thought to, but that is exactly Green's point -- we wealthier people in wealthier countries tend to dismiss tuberculosis as an infection that can be easily cured, but in much of the world where resources are more limited, it can still be a death sentence. He wrote about how vital aid agencies and various government programs have been in helping fight this scourge, and I couldn't help wondering where all that assistance is now, given Trump's evisceration of overseas aid from the USA. How many people in Africa or Asia who used to reliably get their medication now must go without? You gotta wonder.
Here's a random factoid from Green's book that I found interesting. Writing about the year 1804, when inventor and industrialist James Watt's son Gregory died of tuberculosis, Green said: "I understand if this all feels like ancient history, but it's really not. As of 2025, around 117 billion modern humans have lived. Over 100 billion were born before 1804. Almost everything that ever happened to us, and almost everyone who ever happened, happened before 1804."
That gives some context to our modern lives, doesn't it?
Life expectancies in that year were not much different than they had been thousands of years earlier. Now, of course, our life expectancies have grown, even in developing countries -- but tuberculosis remains a stubborn problem because of pharmaceutical capitalism, government inaction, conflict and persistent poverty and lack of opportunity. "We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis," Green wrote. "But we choose not to live in that world."
I was out in the garden a little bit, but not much. About the only thing I did yesterday of any benefit to our household was water the indoor plants. It looks like our Thanksgiving/Christmas cacti are poised to have a good year -- I see buds on every plant. Hopefully they'll last. (Now that I've mentioned them, I've cursed them.)
Here's another look at some of our orchids, which got a shower yesterday. That seems to give them a boost and help battle any insect pests. They sure are blooming up a storm!
And here's an unusual sight I came across on my walk to work on Friday -- a glass of milk (I assume) sitting out on the street. Someone must have been trying to feed a stray cat. Looks like the cat did not partake, or hadn't yet, anyway. Hopefully it was pasteurized. Otherwise -- tuberculosis!
It is an interesting subject... especially as now TB is proving resistant to the drugs used.
ReplyDeleteTB and milk.. selling unpasteurised or raw milk is illegal in Scotland .
However most don't realise that dairies producing this have to meet far higher standards and more frequent inspections. One scare in the past years of infections caused by dairy products was not actually caused by the producers, but but subsequent handling further down the food chain.
I hope the milk wasn't left out for a cat...as they are lactose intolerant
Yes, GZ. Total mystery to me why cats are given milk. An even bigger mystery that cats tend to circle most food with suspicion (particularly if you, "cleverly", have hidden a pill in a delicious morsel - don't ask) yet milk they'll fall for. There is even that old saying: The cat who got the cream.
DeleteWell, mine only got water.
U
It is strange that milk or cream somehow became, in the public's imagination, the ideal treat for a cat!
DeleteA further thought...TB is closer than people think. My paternal grandmother died in 1935, indirectly because she had TB. Her father in law died in 1951with TB.
ReplyDeleteMy maternal grandmother was tested for TB in the late 1960s because a friend she visited often contracted TB...
Yeah, that was one of the points of the book -- that it really wasn't so long ago even middle-class and wealthy people were dying from TB. I'm sure I had relatives who died of it too. We all do.
DeleteTuberculosis. The romance of it. Think pale. Think Sanatorium in Switzerland. Languishing on a recliner. In fresh air. Blankets draped over you. All you need to be is a poet to make it, well, more poetic.
ReplyDeleteMy mother who is (or rather was - she died a few weeks ago so am still not used to using the past tense) NOT given to catastrophizing got it into her head that I might have TB. I was about eight or so. Was put into some frightful contraption to x-ray my lungs. Naturally, I came out as clear and immaculate as the white driven snow. No poetry on a recliner in the mountains for me.
As to pasteurized milk: I was brought up on body warm (yes, yuck) milk straight from the cow's udder. Possibly accounts for the fact that I am not dead yet.
Fact is, Steve, countries choose on what to spend money on. A bit of TB here or there? It's one way of keeping population figures down whilst complaining about decline in birth rates.
U
Yes, Green writes about the ideals of beauty in the 1800s that directly stemmed from "consumptives," like pale skin with a rosy flush, delicacy and thinness. Those romanticized images live on in many paintings from the era. And consumption was socially linked to art and those with an artistic temperament.
DeleteIt's a mystery to me why we don't focus more on caring for the people who are already here rather than idealizing babies who are basically abandoned by the pro-natalist crowd the minute they emerge from the birth canal.
I am sorry to learn that your mother died, Ursula.
DeleteNot knowing how close (or not) you were, there must still be quite a mix of feelings, as we all know is natural when it comes to grieving, especially a parent.
Mein Beileid.
Back in the 70s I worked in the Chest Clinic at our local hospital, which was the closest to Heathrow Airport. The majority of patients there were recent immigrants arriving from the Indian subcontinent who were screened and then treated for TB, all courtesy of the NHS.
ReplyDeleteI just remember so many sample pots of sputum being handed over at reception and then very carefully carried to Sister in the sluice room!
Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
DeleteThat factoid does put things into context. Fascinating. SG just discovered that his 5-greats grandfather died of TB in Maine in 1799.
ReplyDeleteNope. Died of Typhus. Never mind!
DeleteHa! Different disease, but also an incredible scourge at the time. Along with typhoid, which is yet another different thing.
DeleteJohn Green is a multi-faceted author. When I was teaching 7th grade, I used to show my class his crash course videos on various historical topics. He would talk a mile a minute and my students were mesmerized.
ReplyDeleteHe is very skilled and condensing complexity down to something comprehensible, especially for young people. I guess any YA author would need to be good at that.
DeleteMy mother used to worry that I might become 'consumptive.' My sister, 15 years older than me, had a tubercular gland in her neck removed, and also had boyfriends in sanatoria.
ReplyDeleteI remember worrying about TB myself, along with almost every other illness possible, but at least I knew TB could be cured.
DeleteCodex: If Green is claiming this is easily treatable it's dangerous info. Not prevalent in the western world, but there nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteHe's not saying that. He's saying easy treatment is our western misconception. But even drug-resistant TB can usually be treated by newer medicines. The problem is, the pharmaceutical industry lacks the incentive to invest in developing more TB drugs, because they are used for a relatively short term (compared to blood pressure or cholesterol medication, for example, which are taken indefinitely).
DeleteCodex: Ah. It came across that way. Pharmaceutical companies are unable to find new antibiotics. The ones used are a combo also used for other illnesses. Specific to TB only is unlikely and not lucrative to invest in. None of the ones given were developed for TB. The problem is that it may make those antibiotics ineffective for other illnesses. I'm not sure he understands that. Antibiotics are a complex subject matter.
DeleteI'm curious -- are you a doctor, or do you have a medical background?
DeleteMentioned it before. Affirmative.
Deletehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369527424001383
DeleteAbove an article that's a little less technical. The intro is a reason but not the main one. Basically its like scientists are trying to invent a new flower that would bloom year round. Not a great analogy, but the cost is prohibitive because it's something completely new
Perhaps a saucer is better utilized; I can't see a cat getting much more than a snout in a glass.
ReplyDelete😆😆😆😆
DeleteThe TB book sounds interesting. My great grandmother died (as many did in the 1800s) of "consumption," which I'm led to understand is the same as tuberculosis. I remember getting the poking tests in school and they still check me now.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I remember those poking tests too. Green explains in the book how those tests developed. The serum used was supposed to be a cure for TB, but it ultimately didn't work. Instead it proved useful for testing for earlier exposure.
DeleteI had schoolfriends vanish for years into the local tb sanatorium, when rest and fresh air were the main treatment. Friends also had tb in their joints, not just the lungs. This isn't ancient history in the west.
ReplyDeleteNo, not ancient at all! Sanatoriums (sanatoria?) were around well into the 1960s, I think.
DeleteIt's a sad situation and brings up a moral question that I struggle with a lot. How much suffering do we inflict upon our own population to pay for helping those in far away countries better their lives/health? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20+% of our own citizens require food or medical health assistance or both from our government for their day to day survival. Meanwhile, we are still borrowing huge amounts of money to pay for this.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the answer. I just know we are on a unsustainable path and something has to change.
I think it's a mistake to cast it as an us-or-them binary. Our country would have plenty of resources to care for our own people and give aid to the rest of the world if our government spent money more wisely and sufficiently taxed corporate and financial-industry income, for example.
DeleteI guess I will respectfully disagree that we have plenty of resources currently if we have 20% of our population dependent on government aid for day to day survival. Sure we could tax corporations or the rich more. We are already see corporations starting to leave to more tax favorable countries and that will only increase as we tax them more. I'm not sure how our country could spend money more wisely when any cuts to spending lead to protests and outrage. Our citizens are trained to embrace politicians who promise to give them more money!
DeleteI'm all for helping the less fortunate of the world if we can just balance the budget before doing so. But we would have to cut every cent of non-entitlement, defense, and debt service spending just to balance our budget. We would have to trim entitlement spending and/or defense spending to have extra money to give away to not increase our debt more. Trump just tried to cut a tiny fraction of our non-entitlement spending and look what happened. His party's attempt to cut a bit of entitlement spending, i.e. ACA subsidies has led to our government being shut down. I'm not seeing a path to responsible spending.
That should have read, "we would have to cut every cent of non-entitlement spending just to balance our budget."
DeleteOur local hospital started off in 1907 as a TB sanitarium. Naperville was considered to be out in the country and so patients were sent there from Chicago. Now it is a huge hospital and Naperville has grown to a large city.
ReplyDeleteTuberculosis built Naperville! Probably not something the Chamber of Commerce would want to tout. :)
DeleteI guess that TB is one of those things we'll never entirely be rid of unless the entire world makes a unified, concentrated effort to end it. Somehow I can't see that happening.
ReplyDeleteI suppose TB will always be around, but I do think capitalism skews drug innovation and availability, which makes it harder to treat worldwide.
DeleteWhen I worked in a group home setting (I was an admin, and didn't work directly with the guys) we all had to be tested for TB once a year. Group homes are petri dishes & you have to really work hard to make sure things don't spread there!
ReplyDeleteI can imagine! I guess any large collection of people housed together is likely to be a petri dish.
DeleteAbout hedgehogs -- can you knock a brick out of the base of the wall to help them? They have ground level highways, and just a small opening, few inches, can be very helpful.
ReplyDeleteAlas, it is not my wall to knock, and in any case I suspect it's too thick. We do have wooden fences on either side that could be supplied with holes but I bet Mrs. Kravitz would have a fit if hedgehogs were making homes in her garden! (I don't think they live anywhere around us, anyway. As I understand it the closest hedgehog population is in Regent's Park. I'd be surprised if they're not also on Hampstead Heath, but maybe there are too many dogs.)
DeleteMy grandmother died of tuberculosis when my father was very little. I remember hearing the stories of how she was placed in a special home for TB patients and put on a porch along with other patients during winter because they thought the cold air would help them. That sounded like a sort of torture to me. When I started working for the place I work now, I had to get a TB test before I began work. I remember at the time that I thought TB was a thing of the past but the test was required for employment.
ReplyDeleteYes, Green mentioned that in the book -- fresh air at all costs, even in inclement weather!
DeleteGreen could have written about other diseases with similar histories. Unfortunately these books are not read that much.
ReplyDeleteI doubt his would be widely read if it were written by anyone else. As a famous writer with a wide following he can bring along a lot of readers.
DeleteI was amused by you writing about the christmas cactus and then showing pictures of the orchids. I'm sure they do benefit from a shower now and then. Do you ever take them out in the rain?
ReplyDeleteMy father got tuberculosis after he enlisted and spent two years during WWII in the hospital. Every meal was served on paper plates in an attempt to reduce spreading the infection. Also chicken. He ate so much chicken he swore he would never eat it again (and it was rarely served in my house growing up). Also paper plates. We never used paper plates for the same reason.
I guess that did seem weird, switching from the cactus to the orchids with no transition! I DO know the difference! LOL
DeleteIt's funny that people were so focused on plates when the infection is spread readily in the air, and is apparently all around us.
I love John Green, but haven't read the book yet. It's on my to read list. Treating TB is not easy and requires people to take their meds for six months and if the first line antibiotics don't work, the next round of meds is two years of meds. That's a long time and a lot of money that many in developing countries can't manage. The alternative, is to stop treating people midway through their antibiotic treatment, which allows for the rise of drug resistant TB. Treating people in far away countries is good for everyone in the world.
ReplyDelete"Cutting For Stone", an excellent book, has an extremely graphic description of one way to die of TB. It's not a benign disease.
As a nurse I think you'll really like the book. It also discusses DOTS, the method of supervised medication that stems from the fact that TB is hard to treat, especially among some populations.
DeleteI've met only one person diagnosed with TB. According to his story, he worked and traveled the world on cargo ships. In his mid-20's he was diagnosed, quarantined and successfully treated. Upon release he started a successful dot-com business. He died recently at 77 of cancer.
ReplyDeleteIdeally, Big Pharma will produce alternative drugs to solve specific health problems.
Will AI tech facilitate this? New approaches that reduce cost of time-consuming, labor-intensive research which delays bringing new drugs to market could improve things for everyone.
Oh, that's an interesting idea -- using AI to help develop drugs. I suppose if it gets smart enough it could happen!
DeleteThe CDC estimates that 1.3 million in the US have latent TB, which means they've been infected with mycobacterium. It can convert to active TB in people with damaged immune systems, which would include many people who have had Covid. It's sort of a terrible thought.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a very common organism! The lungs can apparently encase the infection in a sort of capsule, which halts its progress, and those capsules are called "tubercles," hence the name.
DeleteThat glass of milk looks gigantic! My mom had undulant fever from raw milk so was very pro-pasteurization. TB flies under the radar and shouldn't. The cavalier attitude toward vaccines in the US will bring back many scourges of history, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteHa! A trick of the camera. It really wasn't that big. :)
DeleteYes, the coming years are going to be interesting in terms of public health, and probably not in a good way.
The only patients I’ve nursed with TB are Asian patients suffering from a TB PARALYSIS in my spinal days
ReplyDelete“
TB paralysis, or Pott's paraplegia, is the paralysis of the legs caused by tuberculosis (TB) infection of the spine. This condition arises from Mycobacterium tuberculosis damaging the spine, leading to nerve compression from abscesses, inflammatory tissue, or even direct infection of the spinal cord. Treatment involves addressing the TB infection with antibiotics, often combined with surgical decompression to relieve pressure on the spinal cord”
Yeah, apparently in can infect lots of parts of the body, even though we often think of it as a lung disease.
DeleteRead Green's book with a great deal of interest; heard about it listening to a podcast by Green shortly after Musk killed all funding for USAID and boasted about "putting it through the woodchopper." TB ravaged both sides of my family well into the 1930's. Both my parents carried the germ. When my oldest sister got Hodgkin's Disease, a kind of cancer, and they were waiting for the diagnosis, the worst thing my mother could think of was TB, which had pretty much wiped out her mother's family, including her mother, who was sent to a sanitarium when my mother was 7 and died when she was 11. My sister read this when they were having the hearings confirming RFK Jr to head the CDC and said it was surreal.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to hear Green's response to Trump's cuts. It's got to be frustrating to write a book geared at making people more aware of necessary changes in public health, and instead have the tide move even farther away from his goal!
DeleteTotally admire your orchids and your care of them. In my extended family there have been two cases of tb, both as children and before proper antimicrobial treatment was available, both recovered which was seen as a miracle.
ReplyDeleteAny news on the glass of milk? Investigate for your readers?
LOL -- I'm not sure how I would investigate it. It wasn't there when I passed the same spot again later. We may have to live with ambiguity. :)
DeleteYour orchids are extravagant and gorgeous. I don't choose to think about tuberculosis or any other nasty disease that will probably eventually kill me. "Pour me another, bartender!"
ReplyDeleteWell, there's no point in needless worrying! I don't worry about it myself either, because the fact is, if you or I got it we could get treatment -- even the drug-resistant types can ultimately be defeated. (For now!)
DeleteI just brought my Christmas cactus from the old house to the new. I felt so guilty about neglecting it, but was shocked to see that it is covered in buds. It has never promised a display like this before! TB tests are still a requirement here, although I have never met anyone who actually had it. It is heartbreaking that so much damage has been done by this administration, to healthcare abroad and here at home. Measles is on the uptick.
ReplyDeleteI think Christmas cactuses appreciate being ignored. Too much care seems to kill them faster than neglect!
Delete