Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change (World Perspectives Series Volume Twenty-two [22])

xv, [2], 236 pp. 8vo. An ambitious work relating medical health to the shaping of the world's civilizations, written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of So Human an Animal. Dubos was a microbiologist who discovered tyrothricin and gramicidin, two early examples of antibiotics that are still in use today, and which influenced research that later led to the development of penicillin. He is also credited for the popularity of the phrase "Think globally, act locally," which modern environmentalists have used liberally in their advocacy of farm-to-table restaurants, green energy reforms, and other sustainability initiatives. "'Complete freedom from disease and from struggle is almost incompatible with the process of living, ' Rene Dubos asserted in this classic essay on ecology and health. All the accomplishments of science and technology, he argued, will not bring the utopian dream of universal well-being, because they ignore the dynamic process of adaptation to a constantly changing environment that every living organism must face."