Phthisis is your life: a historical paper for consumptives

Abstract

The central questions to be addressed by this paper concern the factors responsible for the continued presence of tuberculosis in cities: What are the socio-economic mechanisms that allow some populations to continue to harbour the mycobacterium? The historical literature provides information about conditions that tend to reoccur from one century to the next: TB has been harboured in marginal populations, that were poor, lived in crowded cities, and were burdened by other parasites and psycho-social stress. Our cultural knowledge of TB over the centuries, however, has not been cumulative. Death, chronic illness, deviance, and poverty are the value·laden emotional issues which are marginalized along with the individuals that they affect.Understanding TB as a 'disease' requires an acknowledgement that 'disease' is a concept that involves more than the presence and action of biological agents of infection; it also involves social and cultural responses to, and interpretations of, that contamination and its effects on the individual.