Liverpool's x-ray campaign against tuberculosis. Lithograph, ca. 1960, Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0),
TB is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and it most often affects the lungs. TB is spread through the air when people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected. Every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis (TB). Despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die from TB each year – making it the world’s top infectious killer...TB is the leading cause of death of people with HIV and also a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance....Most of the people who fall ill with TB live in low- and middle-income countries, but TB is present all over the world. About half of all people with TB can be found in 8 countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and South Africa.....About one-quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be infected by TB bacteria. Only 5-15% of these people will fall ill with active TB disease. The rest have TB infection but are not ill and cannot transmit the disease. Both TB infection and disease are curable using antibiotics.
--World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/health-topics/tuberculosis#tab=tab_1, (accessed April 5, 2021)
Discovering Tuberculosis: a global history, 1900 to the present by
Tuberculosis is one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, killing nearly two million people every year--more now than at any other time in history. While the developed world has nearly forgotten about TB, it continues to wreak havoc across much of the globe. In this interdisciplinary study of global efforts to control TB, Christian McMillen examines the disease's remarkable staying power by offering a probing look at key locations, developments, ideas, and medical successes and failures since 1900. He explores TB and race in east Africa, in South Africa, and on Native American reservations in the first half of the twentieth century, investigates the unsuccessful search for a vaccine, uncovers the origins of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Kenya and elsewhere in the decades following World War II, and details the tragic story of the resurgence of TB in the era of HIV/AIDS. Discovering Tuberculosis explains why controlling TB has been, and continues to be, so difficult.
Tuberculosis Then and Now: perspectives on the history of an infectious disease by
In Tuberculosis Then and Now leading scholars and new researchers in the field reflect on the changing medical, social, and cultural understanding of the disease and engage in a wider debate about the role of narrative in the social history of medicine and how it informs current debates and issues surrounding the treatment of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Through a case study of the history of tuberculosis and its treatment, this collection examines medicine and health care from the perspectives of class, race, and gender, providing a challenging and refreshing addition to the field of bacteria-centred accounts of the history of medicine.
Captain of Death : the story of tuberculosis by
The dramatic story of tuberculosis is told here in a straightforward and accessible style. It presents the stories of persons connected with the disease, either as victims, or as those who made contributions to our knowledge of it; in addition to these personal accounts, the book unfolds the history and explains the pathogenesis of TB. The re-emergence of tuberculosis as a major American public health hazard has focused much attention on this ancient disease. This book offers a comprehensive account of the disease from prehistoric times through to the present day, detailing the attempts to eradicate it completely. Its four separate sections (the spread of tuberculosis; its infectious nature; susceptibility to it; and methods of treatment) are linked through the device of presenting individuals' particular experience of the disease, whether as as victims, or as those who made contributions to our knowledge of it; in between these vignettes, the book unfolds the history and explains the pathogenesis of TB. A detailed medical glossary completes the volume. Thomas M. Daniel is emeritus professor of medicine and international health and Director of the Center for International Health at Case Western Reserve University.
Pioneers in Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis by
Throughout history, tuberculosis has been at or near the top of the list of infectious diseases that have plagued humankind. This pervasive disease has had a central position not only in causing illness but also in challenging medical scientists to understand it -- and, in so doing, to further understand all of human health and illness. Pioneers in Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis tells the stories of six of these individuals: Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec [pathology], Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch [bacteriology], Hermann Michael Biggs [public health], Clemens von Pirquet [immunology], Wade Hampton Frost [epidemiology], and Selman Abraham Waksman [antibiotics]. Itexamines not only their contributions in their own fields but also their special work in conquering tuberculosis. Presenting their fascinating lives and the seminal work they did in their disciplines, the author examines the importance of their discoveries and relates them to the dramatic expansion of medical science during the era in which they lived.Thomas M. Daniel is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and International Health and Emeritus Director of the Center for International Health at Case Western Reserve University. His previous book, Captain of Death: The Story of Tuberculosis [University of Rochester Press, 1997] was "strongly recommended" by the NewEngland Journal of Medicine, and was selected by Choice for its Outstanding Academic Book List for 1998.
Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature: invalid lives by
Until the nineteenth century, consumptives were depicted as sensitive, angelic beings whose purpose was to die beautifully and set an example of pious suffering - while, in reality, many people with tuberculosis faced unemployment, destitution, and an unlovely death in the workhouse. Focusing on the period 1821-1912, in which modern ideas about disease, disability, and eugenics emerged to challenge Romanticism and sentimentality, Invalid Lives examines representations of nineteenth-century consumptives as disabled people. Letters, self-help books, eugenic propaganda, and press interviews with consumptive artists suggest that people with tuberculosis were disabled as much by oppressive social structures and cultural stereotypes as by the illness itself. Invalid Lives asks whether disruptive consumptive characters in Wuthering Heights, Jude the Obscure, The Idiot, and Beatrice Harraden's 1893 New Woman novel Ships That Pass in the Night represented critical, politicised models of disabled identity (and disabled masculinity) decades before the modern disability movement.
Disease, Class and Social Change: tuberculosis in Folkestone and Sandgate, 1880-1930 by
This previously unexamined history of open-air treatment in English coastal resorts demonstrates how contrasting meanings were assigned to tuberculosis along lines of class. It assesses the shifting inter-relation of medical, political and social forces in determining responses to this devastating disease, and analyses the relationship between scientific ideas, in particular social evolution and germ theory, and attitudes to poverty and chronic disease. In Folkestone and Sandgate these confl...
Bargaining for Life: a social history of tuberculosis, 1876-1938 by
Tuberculosis was the most common cause of death in the United States during the nineteenth century. The lingering illness devastated the lives of patients and families, and by the turn of the century, fears of infectiousness compounded their anguish. Historians have usually focused on the changing medical knowledge of tuberculosis or on the social campaigns to combat it. Using a wide range of sources, especially the extensive correspondence of a Philadelphia physician, Lawrence F. Flick, in Bargaining for Life Barbara Bates documents the human story by chronicling how men and women attempted to cope with the illness, get treatment, earn their living, and maintain social relationships.
Disease and Class: tuberculosis and the shaping of modern North American society by 
Saving Sickly Children : the tuberculosis preventorium in American life, 1909-1970 by
Known as "The Great Killer" and "The White Plague," few diseases influenced American life as much as tuberculosis. Sufferers migrated to mountain or desert climates believed to ameliorate symptoms. Architects designed homes with sleeping porches and verandas so sufferers could spend time in the open air. The disease even developed its own consumer culture complete with invalid beds, spittoons, sputum collection devices, and disinfectants. The "preventorium," an institution designed to protect children from the ravages of the disease, emerged in this era of Progressive ideals in public health. In this book, Cynthia A. Connolly provides a provocative analysis of public health and family welfare through the lens of the tuberculosis preventorium. This unique facility was intended to prevent TB in indigent children from families labeled irresponsible or at risk for developing the disease. Yet, it also held deeply rooted assumptions about class, race, and ethnicity. Connolly goes further to explain how the child-saving themes embedded in the preventorium movement continue to shape children's health care delivery and family policy in the United States.
So Has a Daisy Vanished:: Emily Dickinson and tuberculosis by
This work places Emily Dickinson's poetry in a new setting, examining the many ways in which Dickinson's literary style was affected by her experiences with tuberculosis and her growing fear of contracting the disease. The author gives an in-depth discussion on 73 of Dickinson's poems, providing readers with a fresh perspective on issues that have long plagued Dickinson biographers, including her notoriously shut-in lifestyle, her complicated relationship with the tuberculosis-stricken Benjamin Franklin Newton, and the possible real-life inspirations for her "terror since September."
The Ailing City: health, tuberculosis, and culture in Buenos Aires, 1870-1950 by
For decades, tuberculosis in Buenos Aires was more than a dangerous bacillus. It was also an anxious state of mind shaped not only by fears of contagion and death but also by broader social and cultural concerns. These worries included changing work routines, rapid urban growth and its consequences for housing and living conditions, efforts to build a healthy "national race," and shifting notions of normality and pathology. In The Ailing City, the historian Diego Armus explores the metaphors, state policies, and experiences associated with tuberculosis in Buenos Aires between 1870 and 1950. During those years, the disease was conspicuous and frightening, and biomedicine was unable to offer an effective cure. Against the background of the global history of tuberculosis, Armus focuses on the making and consolidation of medicalized urban life in the Argentine capital. He discusses the state's intrusion into private lives and the ways that those suffering from the disease accommodated and resisted official attempts to care for them and to reform and control their morality, sociability, sexuality, and daily habits. The Ailing City is based on an impressive array of sources, including literature, journalism, labor press, medical journals, tango lyrics, films, advertising, imagery, statistics, official reports, and oral history. It offers a unique perspective on the emergence of modernity in a cosmopolitan city on the periphery of world capitalism.
Building Resistance: children, tuberculosis, and the Toronto sanatorium by
In 1882, Robert Koch identified tuberculosis as an infectious bacterial disease. In the sixty years between this revelation and the discovery of an antibiotic treatment, streptomycin, the disease was widespread in Canada, often infecting children within their family homes. Soon, public concerns led to the establishment of hospitals that specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis, including the Toronto sanatorium, which opened in 1904 on the outskirts of the city. Situated in the era before streptomycin, Building Resistance explores children's diverse experiences with tuberculosis infection, disease, hospitalization, and treatment at the Toronto sanatorium between 1909 and 1950. This early sanatorium era was defined by the principles of resistance building, recognizing that the body itself possessed a potential to overcome tuberculosis through rest, nutrition, fresh air, and sometimes surgical intervention. Grounded in a rich and descriptive case study and based on archival research, the book holistically approaches the social and biological impact of infection and disease on the bodies, families, and lives of children. Lavishly illustrated, compassionate, and informative, Building Resistance details the inner dimensions and evolving treatment choices of an early modern hospital, as well as the fate of its young patients.
Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret by
In The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret Katherine McCuaig takes an in-depth look at the campaign against TB, from its beginnings as part of the turn-of-the-century urban social reform movement to the 1950s and the discovery of antibiotics that could cure it. Although the bacillus that causes it had been discovered in 1882, at the turn of the century TB was, as Osler observed, "a social disease with a medical aspect." With "fresh air, good food, good houses, and hope" as the only available treatment, fighting the disease meant not only eliminating the germ but attacking the underlying social problems that predisposed an individual to disease - alcoholism and poor living and working conditions. By the end of World War I the bacteriological approach had become dominant, with federally expanded sanatoria, increasing provincial involvement and responsibility, and more sophisticated technology to diagnose and treat the disease. The campaign against TB not only influenced the way in which health services were established and the division of responsibility among various levels of government and volunteers but profoundly affected attitudes toward the political and economic development of Canadian health care and the ultimate demand for medicare. Drawing on sources ranging from government reports and archival material to more general North American social and political historical research, McCuaig demonstrates how TB was viewed and how it was controlled, which owed as much to changing attitudes in society as to bacteriological discoveries.
A Long Way from Home : the tuberculosis epidemic among the Inuit by
Based on recollections of patients, interviews with participants in the government programs, available literature and statistics, and records of the Northern Affairs Program, Grygier examines the programs for the Inuit in all parts of Canada. She also explores the history of tuberculosis in Canada, conditions of life in the North for both Inuit and non-Natives, and the development and modification of government administration of the North. This important study will be of interest to those in Native and northern studies, Canadian social and political history, and the history of medicine in Canada.
Tuberculosis - the Singapore Experience, 1867-2018 by
Through a rich account of tuberculosis in Singapore from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, this book charts the relationship between disease, society and the state, outlining the struggles of colonial and post-colonial governments to cope with widespread disease and to establish effective public health programmes and institutions. Beginning in the nineteenth century when British colonial administrators viewed tuberculosis as a racial problem linked to the poverty, housing and insanitary habits of the Chinese working class, the book goes on to examine the ambitious medical and urban improvement initiatives of the returning British colonial government after the Second World War. It then considers the continuation and growth of these schemes in the post-colonial period and explores the most recent developments which include combating the resurgence of TB and the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
The Modern Epidemic : a history of tuberculosis in Japan by
This work provides a historical and comparative analysis of modern Japan's epidemic of tuberculosis. It demonstrates the links between such epidemics and the social changes that accompanied modernization, and examines the responses of states, private organizations and individuals to these epidemics
American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan by
The tremendous success of China's program of economic reform and the rapid integration of China into the global economy have prompted this study on the economic and financial integration between mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
Tuberculosis by
This thought-provoking biography of tuberculosis presents medical, historical, and social perspectives on this reemergent threat. * Includes images of people and events that are important to the history of TB, as well as those that illustrate various aspects of TB, from microscopic views of bacteria to an example of a Christmas Seal * Presents a World Health Organization map of the 22 countries that carry 80 percent of the global TB burden
Consumed in the City : observing tuberculosis at century's end by
As a public health field worker assigned to control tuberculosis in New York and Chicago in the 1990s, Paul Draus encountered the horrible effects of tuberculosis resurgence in urban areas, and the intersections of disease, blight, and poverty. Consumed in the City grows out of his experiences and offers a persuasive case for thinking about--and treating--tuberculosis as an inseparable component of the scourges of poverty, homelessness, AIDS, and drug abuse. It is impossible, Draus argues, to treat and eliminate tuberculosis without also treating the social ills that underlie the new epidemic. Paul Draus begins by describing his own on-the-job training as a field worker, then places the resurgence of tuberculosis into historical and sociological perspective. He vividly describes his experiences in hospital rooms, clinics, jails, housing projects, urban streets, and other social settings where tuberculosis is often encountered and treated. Using case studies, he demonstrates how social problems affect the success or failure of actual treatment. Finally, Draus suggests how a reformed public health agenda could help institute the changes required to defeat a deadly new epidemic. At once a personal account and a concrete plan for rethinking the role of public health, Consumed in the City marks a significant intervention in the way we think about the entangled crises of urban dislocation, poverty, and disease.
Free Market Tuberculosis : managing epidemics in post-Soviet Georgia by
The Soviet health care infrastructure and its tuberculosis-control system were anchored in biomedicine, but the dire resurgence of tuberculosis at the end of the twentieth century changed how experts in post-Soviet nations--and globally--would treat the disease. As Free Market Tuberculosis dramatically demonstrates, market reforms and standardized treatment programs have both influenced and undermined the management of tuberculosis care in the now-independent country of Georgia. The alarming rate of tuberculosis infection in this nation at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia cannot be disputed, and yet solutions to attacking the disease are very much debated. Anthropologist Erin Koch explores the intersection of the nation's extensive medical history, the effects of Soviet control, and the highly standardized yet poorly regulated treatments promoted by the World Health Organization. Although statistics and reports tell one story--a tale of success in Georgia--Koch's ethnographic approach reveals all facets of this cautionary tale of a monolithic approach to medicine. This book is the 2011 recipient of the annual Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize for the best project in the area of medicine.
Contagion and Confinement: controlling tuberculosis along the skid road by
Historians of tuberculosis have generally focused on the sanatorium era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, losing interest in the disease with the discovery of curative antibiotics in the 1940s. But the author of this work argues that the availability of drugs actually highlighted the complex social problems that predisposed people to tuberculosis and interfered with its treatment. Lerner offers an in-depth look at the history of tuberculosis control in the USA after 1945 and at the issue of forcible detention of non-compliant tuberculosis patients.
The Population Biology of Tuberculosis by
Despite decades of developments in immunization and drug therapy, tuberculosis remains among the leading causes of human mortality, and no country has successfully eradicated the disease. Reenvisioning tuberculosis from the perspective of population biology, this book examines why the disease is so persistent and what must be done to fight it. Treating tuberculosis and its human hosts as dynamic, interacting populations, Christopher Dye seeks new answers to key questions by drawing on demography, ecology, epidemiology, evolution, and population genetics. Dye uses simple mathematical models to investigate how cases and deaths could be reduced, and how interventions could lead to TB elimination. Dye's analysis reveals a striking gap between the actual and potential impact of current interventions, especially drug treatment, and he suggests placing more emphasis on early case detection and the treatment of active or incipient tuberculosis. He argues that the response to disappointingly slow rates of disease decline is not to abandon long-established principles of chemotherapy, but to implement them with greater vigor. Summarizing epidemiological insights from population biology, Dye stresses the need to take a more inclusive view of the factors that affect disease, including characteristics of the pathogen, individuals and populations, health care systems, and physical and social environments. In broadening the horizons of TB research, The Population Biology of Tuberculosis demonstrates what must be done to prevent, control, and defeat this global threat in the twenty-first century.
