Everything Is Tuberculosis: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Along with Koch’s discovery of M. tuberculosis came small improvements in diagnosing and treating TB. X-rays were one of these tools, with Dr. Alan Hart (a trans man who struggled to practice because of rampant transphobia) pioneering the use of chest X-rays as a tool for diagnosing TB. While effective treatments were still hard to come by, tools for prevention also saw progress. Milk became pasteurized to limit spread from cows to humans, and a vaccine emerged. The Bacillus Calmette-Guerine (BCG) vaccine is now known to be ineffective at preventing illness in teens and adults, but it is effective in presenting severe illness in children.

By the 1940s and 1950s, however, TB quickly became a treatable and curable disease. Multiple drugs were developed and proved effective in fighting TB, and death rates plummeted. Sanatoria emptied in the U.S. and Europe, where these drugs were easy to administer, but this cure did not reach the poor countries that desperately needed it. Much of the decisions to keep the cure from largely non-white countries stems from racism and colonialism, as people believed that these populations were too “‘child-like’ to be trusted to take or dispense medicine as prescribed.”