For something to return, it has first to go away. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, TB never did go away; in richer countries it was only driven down to lurk in the places inhabited by society's rejects. It didn't disappear completely from among society's paid-up members: its germs sleep in me today. I have a Ghon focus in my left lung, a collection of cells, some from my immune system, which wall off the tubercle bacilli that infected me more than half a century ago during my childhood in the North of England. Calcium salts have built up and settled in it over the years, so it shows on a chest X-ray.

LRB 5 February 2004 | PDF Download