Consumption: An Old Disease

History of TB
Tuberculosis — a disease also known as consumption, wasting disease, and the white plague — has affected humans for centuries. Until the mid-1800s, people thought that tuberculosis, or TB, was hereditary. They did not realize that it could be spread from person to person through the air. Also, until the 1940s and 1950s, there was no cure for TB. For many people, a diagnosis of TB was a slow death sentence.

In 1865 a French surgeon, Jean-Antoine Villemin, proved that TB was contagious, and in 1882 a German scientist named Robert Koch discovered the bacteria that causes TB. Yet half a century passed before drugs were discovered that could cure TB. Until then, many people with TB were sent to sanatoriums, special rest homes where they followed a prescribed routine every day. No one knows whether sanatoriums really helped people with TB; even so, many people with TB could not afford to go to a sanatorium, and they died at home.

A breakthrough came in 1943. An American scientist, Selman Waksman, discovered a drug that could kill TB bacteria. Between 1943 and 1952, two more drugs were found. After these discoveries, many people with TB were cured, and the death rate for TB in the United States dropped dramatically. Each year, fewer and fewer people got TB.

By the mid-1970s, most TB sanatoriums in the United States had closed. In the next two decades, people began to hope that TB could be eliminated from the United States, like polio and smallpox.

Since the mid-1980s, however, TB cases have started increasing again. Because of the increase in TB, health departments and other organizations are stepping up their efforts to prevent and control the disease. Even today, TB can be fatal if not treated.