Tuberculosis has been known to mankind since ancient times. Earlier this disease has been called by numerous names including consumption (because of the severe weight loss and the way the infection appeared to “consume” the patient), phthisis pulmonaris and the white plague (because of the extreme pallor seen among those infected).
Even today after the development of advanced screening, diagnostic and treatment methods for the disease, a third of the world’s population has been exposed and is infected with the organism. The numbers are over 90% in the developing world.
With advent of HIV infection there is a dramatic resurgence of tuberculosis with more than 8 million new cases each year worldwide and more than 2 million persons dying from it. In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was known as “the captain of all men of death”. It is still true to a large extent today.
Even today after the development of advanced screening, diagnostic and treatment methods for the disease, a third of the world’s population has been exposed and is infected with the organism. The numbers are over 90% in the developing world.
With advent of HIV infection there is a dramatic resurgence of tuberculosis with more than 8 million new cases each year worldwide and more than 2 million persons dying from it. In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was known as “the captain of all men of death”. It is still true to a large extent today.
Tuberculosis in Ancient times
The organism causing tuberculosis - Mycobacterium tuberculosis existed 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. It has been found in relics from ancient Egypt, India, and China. Among Egyptian mummies spinal tuberculosis, known as Pott’s disease has been detected by archaeologists.
Tuberculosis in the Middle age
Evidence of tuberculosis of the cervical lymph nodes of the neck termed scrofula is found in the Middle ages. It was termed as the “king’s evil” and was widely believed that the kings of England and France could cure scrofula simply by touching those affected.
Tuberculosis in the 18th century
In the 18th century in Western Europe, tuberculosis reached its peak with a prevalence as high as 900 deaths per 100,000. Poorly ventilated and overcrowded housing, primitive sanitation, malnutrition and other risk factors led to the rise. The term White plague emerged around this time.
Famous people to suffer from Tuberculosis
Famous men and women over ages suffered from this disease. Notable among these were poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, the authors Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Bronte, and Edgar Allen Poe, the musicians Nicolo Paganini and Frederic Chopin to name a few.
Robert Koch and Tuberculosis
Robert Koch, a German physician and scientist, presented his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB), on the evening of March 24, 1882.
Koch's lecture, considered by many to be the most important in medical history, was so innovative, inspirational and thorough that it set the stage for the scientific procedures of the twentieth century. He described how he had invented a new staining method and demonstrated it for the audience. Koch brought his entire laboratory to the lecture room: microscopes, test tubes with cultures, glass slides with stained bacteria, dyes, reagents, glass jars with tissue samples, etc. He wanted the audience to check his findings for themselves. Koch showed tissue dissections from guinea pigs which were infected with tuberculous material from the lungs of infected apes, from the brains and lungs of humans who had died from blood-borne tuberculosis, from the cheesy masses in lungs of chronically infected patients and from the abdominal cavities of cattle infected with TB. In all cases, the disease which had developed in the experimentally infected guinea pigs was the same, and the cultures of bacteria taken from the infected guinea pigs were identical. One important scientist in the audience was Paul Ehrlich (Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1908) who later confessed, "I hold that evening to be the most important experience of my scientific life." When Koch ended his lecture there was complete silence. No questions, no congratulations, no applause. The audience was stunned. Slowly people got up and started looking into the microscopes to see the TB bacteria with their own eyes.
News of Koch's discovery spread rapidly. The results were published in a German medical journal on April 10, in England after a rapid translation in The Times on April 22, and in the US in The New York Times on May 3, 1882. Robert Koch was now a famous scientist and became known as "The Father of Bacteriology." He was presented with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905 "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis."
Koch's lecture, considered by many to be the most important in medical history, was so innovative, inspirational and thorough that it set the stage for the scientific procedures of the twentieth century. He described how he had invented a new staining method and demonstrated it for the audience. Koch brought his entire laboratory to the lecture room: microscopes, test tubes with cultures, glass slides with stained bacteria, dyes, reagents, glass jars with tissue samples, etc. He wanted the audience to check his findings for themselves. Koch showed tissue dissections from guinea pigs which were infected with tuberculous material from the lungs of infected apes, from the brains and lungs of humans who had died from blood-borne tuberculosis, from the cheesy masses in lungs of chronically infected patients and from the abdominal cavities of cattle infected with TB. In all cases, the disease which had developed in the experimentally infected guinea pigs was the same, and the cultures of bacteria taken from the infected guinea pigs were identical. One important scientist in the audience was Paul Ehrlich (Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1908) who later confessed, "I hold that evening to be the most important experience of my scientific life." When Koch ended his lecture there was complete silence. No questions, no congratulations, no applause. The audience was stunned. Slowly people got up and started looking into the microscopes to see the TB bacteria with their own eyes.
News of Koch's discovery spread rapidly. The results were published in a German medical journal on April 10, in England after a rapid translation in The Times on April 22, and in the US in The New York Times on May 3, 1882. Robert Koch was now a famous scientist and became known as "The Father of Bacteriology." He was presented with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905 "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis."