THE REMEDY

The fascinating story of the 19th-century race for a cure to tuberculosis, which had killed more people than any disease in history, and a glimpse at the lives of two men—medical doctor-turned-bacteriologist Robert Koch and celebrated doctor-turned-author Arthur Canon Doyle—and their coincidental intersection and unwitting collaboration.

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 and soon embarked on a remedy—a remedy that would be his undoing.

When Koch announced he’d found a cure, 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 those desperate for relief, Koch’s cure was worth the risk. As Europe’s consumptives descended upon Berlin, Conan Doyle returned to England to become a writer, not a scientist. But he brought Koch’s scientific methods to the masses through the character of 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 fact, how two men of ambition were emboldened to reach for something more, and how scientific discoveries evolve into social truths. THE REMEDY is a compulsively readable book for fans of Steven Johnson's Ghost Map and John M. Barry's The Great Influenza.
Thomas Goetz is the author of two books. A correspondent at the Atlantic and entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he holds a master of public health from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of literature from the University of Virginia. The former executive editor of WIRED, he speaks frequently on medicine and science. He lives in San Francisco.