Multidrug resistant tuberculosis

Bleeding, purging, bed rest, horseback riding, the mountains, the seashore, cod liver oil, castor oil, chaulmoogra oil, phrenic nerve interruption, thoracoplasty, and pneumothorax—these are just a few of the mostly useless treatments offered for “consumption” until the discovery of antituberculous therapy in the 1940s and 1950s.

The 1960s saw the development of the DOTS strategy involving directly observed administration of short course first line chemotherapy (p 574). By the early 1990s, the world …