Mark K. Lewis - Tuberculosis: How the White Death Changed History

Some movies and books use the image of a person coughing blood into a white handkerchief to show that the person has TB.

Only 5 to 10 percent of people ever develop symptoms of TB disease. About 50 percent of those people develop symptoms within two years.

TB disease occurs when a persons immune system has trouble fighting the tuberculosis bacteria. This causes the person to get sick. The most common symptoms are fevers and night sweats. Many people also have a long-lasting cough. The coughing is the most visible symptom. People cough up blood without treatment. TB was very deadly before treatments became available.

TB bacteria can live anywhere in a persons body.

People who do not show symptoms of TB typically do not spread the disease to others. Medical professionals refer to these as bacteria. This keeps them from getting sick.

People can cover their mouths with masks to help reduce the spread of certain diseases such as TB.

However, people showing symptoms of TB disease are more likely to pass the bacteria to others. When they cough, some bacteria leave their lungs. The bacteria become airborne. Other people inhale them. Not all of these people become sick. But TB bacteria can be hard to get rid of once they are in someones lungs. TB disease can even show up later in life.

TB disease is mostly spread through the air. This is different from some other diseases such as cholera. People cannot catch TB by shaking a patients hand. TB does not spread through water.

One sick person in a crowded place can pass TB to many people.

FAST FACT

Some very rare strains of TB spread through contaminated milk or meat products.

CHAPTER 3

THE HISTORY OF TUBERCULOSIS

Scientists believe that tuberculosis bacteria have been around for more than 15,000 years. The types of tuberculosis bacteria that exist today developed between 250 and 1,000 years ago.

FAST FACT

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide.

Scans of Egyptian mummies show evidence of TB bacteria in their spines. Some Egyptian art shows people who may have had complications from tuberculosis.

Hippocrates, an Ancient Greek physician, wrote about TB around the year 400 BC. However, people did not fully understand TB until recent years.

Tuberculosis has been found in ancient Egyptian mummies.

CONTAGIOUS OR NOT?

. They prescribed treatments such as drinking milk, eating butter that was boiled with honey, and exercising. They did not accept Fracastoros hypothesis.

Doctors used to prescribe milk to cure tuberculosis. Patients did not get better by drinking milk.

In 1720, an English physician named . People could pass these organisms to one another. But doctors did not believe Marten either.

FAST FACT

People who smoke tobacco are more likely to contract tuberculosis. This is because smoking damages apersons lungs.

normal lung(left), smokers lung(right)

In the 1700s, most doctors believed that illnesses were caused by imbalances in the four humors. The theory stated that each person had four humors in his or her body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. When one of these became unbalanced, a person developed an illness. Curing the illness was a matter of putting the humors back in balance.

Doctors used a treatment called purging, which was making the patient vomit. They also used bloodletting, which included removing some of the patients blood. These treatments existed as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. Unfortunately, they did not work. Cuts often became infected as a result of bloodletting. Both treatments weakened patients even more and made them sicker.