Memoir of a Living Disease: The Story of Earl Hershfield and Tuberculosis in Manitoba and Beyond

Ian W. Toal is a registered nurse in Winnipeg.

Memoir of a Living Disease does not know if it wants to be a biography,
a history, or a source of information about TB. Consequently, it ends up
doing none of them very well.

Initially the book focuses on Dr. Earl Hershfield, a Manitoba physician
who has specialized in tuberculosis since 1963. Dr. Hershfield had a
somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the management of tuberculosis and
made enormous strides in controlling TB. Due to the advances in TB
treatment promoted by Dr. Hershfield, the Manitoba Sanitorium program
was abandoned, with the last institution in Ninette closing in 1972.

This is where things start going off the rails. After a chapter on Dr.
Hershfield’s career (followed by one on how he became a physician), we
skip to a history of the Sanitorium program in Manitoba. Dr. Hershfield
and the Manitoba program disappear from the middle third of the text,
which provides a simplistic primer on TB before taking us on a whirlwind
tour of TB “hot spots” in Manitoba (mostly poor neighbourhoods and
Native reserves where people live in crowded conditions and are in
precarious health at the best of times). Dr. Hershfield reappears in the
third part of the book, which discusses his involvement in national and
international organizations dedicated to TB. This convoluted approach to
the subject(s) results in a fragmented text that does justice to neither
the people nor the disease.

Another major problem is the author’s failure to provide references.
For example, there is no source for his statement that “in Russia,
many doctors are opposed to DOT (Directly Observed Therapy), which they
see as something that’s only appropriate in developing countries.”
Nor do the sketchy bibliographical notes at the end of the book offer
any clues as to where to find more information. As well, the book
includes a name index but no subject index, so if you to locate TB
pathology, or bacillus or surgery for TB, you’re out of luck.

Memoir of a Living Disease provides basic information about TB, but its
flaws outweigh it virtues, and it’s a frustrating book to read.