Bharat Venkat: At the Limits of Cure

Through an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India, Dr. Bharat Venkat examines what it means to be cured, and what it means for a cure to come undone. Drawing on his book, At the Limits of Cure (Duke University Press, 2021), this talk tells a story that stretches from the colonial period—a time of sanatoria, travel cures, and gold therapy—into a postcolonial present marked by antibiotic miracles and their failures.