Lecture 19 - Tuberculosis (II): After Robert Koch

The cultural transition from the romantic era of consumption to the era of tuberculosis derived not only from the germ theory of disease and the triumph of contagionism over anticontagionism, but also from political considerations. Worries over population decline and growing working-class militancy were aggravated by what now appeared to be a social disease, or a disease of poverty. One of the strategies deployed against the disease was the sanatorium, an institution which was capable both of instructing patients in contagionism and in imposing a practical quarantine. Although the development of effective chemotherapy in the 1940s raised hopes that tuberculosis might be globally eradicated, these have unfortunately proven to be overly optimistic. Factors such as poverty and population displacement continue to favor the disease's spread today, particularly in the Third World.