The Industrial Revolution is believed to have brought mass infection with tuberculosis to civilized Europe and USA. Americans were sickly. Water was dangerous to drink. Food (especially meat and dairy) were dangerous to eat. And, medicine was completely unregulated meaning medicine tended to be based on heroin or opiates. Diseases ravished communities. And some civic leaders responded better than others. Workers in search of work actively moved alone or often in large families. They were housed in dilapidated houses and barracks, where unsanitary conditions reigned and no medicines. Filthy cities with city-forming enterprises, where most of the townspeople were employed, were especially susceptible to tuberculosis. These enterprises spoiled the environment and poisoned the surrounding air. Diseases (not only pulmonary) were often ignored by people since there was neither the opportunity, the time, nor the money to get medical advice and undergo quality treatment. It was unsanitary conditions and increased population density that served as a solid foundation for the development of tuberculosis among all sectors of society.
The nature of the disease has not been identified, and the exact route of infection has not been established. Even experienced doctors were sure for a while that tuberculosis was not contagious. Destruction and unsanitary conditions reigned in society, and people did not seek to protect themselves and others from tuberculosis. A crucial aspect was that most people were used to spitting in the streets, which allowed this disease to infect other citizens.
Despite the glorification of tuberculosis in some literary works and the fashion for a sickly look, this problem remained a hazardous. Patients were often stigmatized; doctors sometimes denied them treatment and sent them home. However, physicians emerged who advocated “compassionate treatment of sufferers of tuberculosis.” These specialists subsequently revolutionized the treatment of lung diseases through experimentation. The first sanatoriums were opened in Europe in the late 1870s.
Patients could enjoy the treatment: “The new sanatoria were designed in such a way that patients could stay in single rooms or rooms with a few beds, which usually gave onto large terraces.” Patients could sunbathe or eat on these terraces and read newspapers, magazines, or books. Still, the sanatoriums were different for different strata of society since not everyone could afford first-class medical care. Such places for the poor were like prisons or places of temporary detention, where they were isolated from society to avoid further infections. The sanitarium movement has helped many people escape stigma and death in horrendous stench and unsanitary conditions. However, people continued to die after the expiration of their stay in these places.
Against the backdrop of a social tragedy, scientific and medical achievements in microbiology developed, which later, only in the last century, made it possible to create a vaccine. In laboratories, doctors and biologists conducted experiments on animals to reveal the similarities between tuberculosis in humans and animals. There was a fundamental question about whether animals can transmit tuberculosis directly to people. Specialists assumed that in the case of finding a cure for animal tuberculosis, it might be possible to cure human tuberculosis as well. Meanwhile, already at the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis cases began to decline. Nevertheless, the disease had already claimed many lives by that time. With the help of chemical experiments and collaborative work of the research community, “the famous scientist Robert Koch was able to isolate the tubercle bacillus.” It was a phenomenal impetus for treating tuberculosis and developing a global system of care for such complicated patients.
Tuberculosis became a dangerous challenge for the society of the Gilded Age and was inscribed in the public culture through the works of art. Sanatoriums were created for patients suffering from unsanitary conditions and filthy air; their development later became a whole social and medical movement. In parallel, scientists tried to find ways of contracting tuberculosis and possible treatment by experimenting on animals and analyzing microorganisms.
Bibliography
Barberis, Ilaria et al. “The History of Tuberculosis: From the First Historical Records to the Isolation of Koch’s Bacillus.” Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene 48, no. 1 (2017): 9-12.
Gutierrez, John. “‘An Earnest Pledge to Fight Tuberculosis’: Tuberculosis, Nation, and Modernity in Cuba, 1899-1908.” Cuban Studies, no. 45 (2017): 280–96. Web.
Le Get, Rebecca. “Under the Shadow of the Tubercle: The Work of Duncan Turner.” Health and History 20, no. 1 (2018): 72–92. Web.
Martini, Mariano et al. “The History of Tuberculosis: The Social Role of Sanatoria for the Treatment of Tuberculosis in Italy Between the End of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century”. Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene 59, no. 4 (2018): 323-327.