Everything Is Tuberculosis

While prior chapters have focused on northern Europe and the U.S., where consumption was thought to be inherited, this was not the case elsewhere in the world. In China and southern Europe, TB was understood to be contagious. However, views of inherited TB would shift in northern Europe and the U.S. at the end of the 19th century. As the wealthy and middle-class populations began to live in less crowded homes, levels of infection decreased. Poor populations were still easily infected, on the other hand, as they lived in worsening conditions because of the Industrial Revolution. So, TB was no longer a disease of broader civilization, but instead of industrialization.

This understanding would once again be challenged by Robert Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis the next year. Koch is a complicated figure, one who made major medical breakthroughs but who would also go on to be disgraced in the scientific field. Still, his discovery of M. tuberculosis changed the course of history. During his time as a practicing doctor, his wife bought him a microscope, and with it, he discovered that anthrax was deadly because of microorganisms. He later did the same with tissue from a tubercle, proving that TB was caused by bacteria. This revelation was astounding. TB was then understood as an infectious disease that affected the poor and marginalized.