Tuberculosis Then
Tuberculosis claimed thousands of American lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, designating it one of the leading causes of death. [1] During the nineteenth-century, most physicians and scientists attributed consumption to a hereditary cause. [2] However, German scientist Robert Koch, the modern "father of microbiology," discovered the bacterial aetiology of the disease in 1882. This discovery occurred during the "germ theory" period of science in the late nineteenth-century. Scientists and physicians realized that one person could spread germs, miniscule organisms that cause disease- such as the tuberculosis bacterium or a virus, to another person through various modes of transmission. The Virginia Public Health Bulletin of 1910 discussed the germ origin of consumption, calling germs "minute vegetable organisms...so small that they cannot be seen except by the aid of the microscope." [3] The American public soon learned that tuberculosis was contagious.
The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, now the American Lung Association, formed in 1904 as a response to the high death rate of the contagion. It changed its name after the decline in tuberculosis death rates in the mid-twentieth century. Numerous other state and local anti-tuberculosis associations formed in order to combat the disease with isolated spaces, dispensaries, education, and even anti-spitting legislation.[4]
Microbiologist Selman Waksman and his student, Albert Schatz, discovered the antibiotic streptomycin in 1944. This drug was the first effective treatment for tuberculosis and marked the beginning of the steep decline of associated mortality rates. [5] Before this discovery, however, literature and public health discourse propagated these cures for tuberculosis of all forms:
- Fresh Air
- Rest
- Good Food
- Proper Living
- Physician Care [6]
1. http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/alav/tuberculosis/
2. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 3.
3. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 3.
4.http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/alav/
5. Richard Wainwright, "Streptomycin: Discovery and Resultant Controversy" in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 13, no. 1 (1991), 97-98.
6. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 60, 62.
2. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 3.
3. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 3.
4.http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/alav/
5. Richard Wainwright, "Streptomycin: Discovery and Resultant Controversy" in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 13, no. 1 (1991), 97-98.
6. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 60, 62.