Breathless Paperback

Andrew McDowell's Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India is an ethnographic study that delves into the complex realities of tuberculosis in a village in North India, where the disease disproportionately affects socially marginalized Dalit farming families. The book explores how TB, an airborne illness, is deeply entangled with biological and social life, examining the roles of various caregivers—nurses, doctors, quacks, mediums, and mystics—in the lives of those afflicted. Through vivid stories centered around metaphorical substances like dust, clouds, and ghosts, McDowell develops a philosophy of breathing that connects medical systems, patient care, and health justice, ultimately revealing how public health and inequality are intimately linked through the intimate yet shared act of breath.