Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green

Regaining his health over the next few years, John noticed something about the West: The hats sucked. Fur traders of European descent often wore bug-infested, brimless coonskin caps. Folks who made their way to Missouri from Texas and Mexico, meanwhile, tended to wear wide-brimmed straw hats that protected from the sun but leaked in the rain. So, after returning to the northeast with his consumption under control, John B. Stetson created a new sort of hat, which in time came to be known as the cowboy hat. (And even, sometimes, the Stetson.)[*]

The third patient was a critically ill young Army officer named Bob Dole, who would survive, and go on to become a U.S. senator, Republican nominee for president, and noted Viagra spokesperson.

Mere despair never tells the whole human story, as much as despair would like to insist otherwise. Hopelessness has the insidious talent of explaining everything: the reason X or Y sucks is that everything sucks, the reason you’re miserable is because misery is the correct response to the world as we find it, and so on. I am prone to despair, and so I know its powerful voice; it just doesn’t happen to be true. Here’s the truth as I see it: Vicious cycles are common. Injustice and unfairness permeate every aspect of human life. But virtuous cycles are also possible.