HLTB21H3 Chapter 13: Chapter 13 Tuberculosis.docx
Document Summary
Chapter 13 the people s plague: tuberculosis (275) Consumption (what tuberculosis was called) was characterized in an 1853 medical text as having the following features: nostalgia, depression, and excessive sexual indulgence. Tuberculosis (tb) was given another name by the afflicted ones: the white plague . Tb caused incessant coughing (made it almost impossible to eat and talk) and pain when breathing which caused weight loss and prevented walking, the pain that required opium and whisky to ameliorate. By the time of death, individuals resembled a cadaver. Consumptive decline was thought to be due to a hereditary predisposition or specific living habits (i. e. poverty, or sexual promiscuity). When localized to the lungs, tb can run an acute course, causing extensive destruction in a few months so- called galloping consumption. Tb can also wax and ane with period of remission (mistaken in some cases for chronic bronchitis with spitting of blood).
