I’ve heard about it before, but I am not sure about these questions: What exactly is it, what happens, does it still exist, is it known by a different name now, is there a cure? Basically, tell me everything 
Tuberculosis. Curable with antibiotics, although I believe the lung damage is permanent.
Consumptioni is pulmonary tuberculosis (tuberculosis affecting the lung). This is the most common form of tuberculosis. Another old name for it was phthisis. The most usual name nowadays is ‘TB’.
It occurs when a person inhales a droplet or particle that contains live bacilli of one of the causative organisms (various species of Mycobacterium. eg. M. tuberculosis and M. bovis). The bacilli breed up in a alveolus, consuming lung tissue and producing a cavity filled with a cheesy substance and surrounded by scar tissue. The patient shows fatigue and weight loss, then develops a cough. Typically the tubercular lesion chews into larger and larger capillaries and arterioles, resulting in the coughing-up of blood-stained sputum (haemoptisis), blood-spitting, and sometimes death by pulmonary haemorrhage. Patients sometimes develop gastro-intestinal tubercles (probably from swallowing their own infected sputum), and often develop pleurisy, leading to death.
TB patients benefit from rest and adequate nutrition.
TB used to be extremely common. It was one of the most common causes of death in all countries except where the population density was very low. Every city hospital had ‘white wards’ full of TB patients gradually coughing away the ends fo their lives. Rich patients went to live in sanatoriums where the air was rarefied or dry, eg. Switzerland or New Mexico. And many jurisdictions made laws against spitting in public places to cut down on the rate of transmission. These laws are mostly still on the books, and I am disgusted to see evidence that they are no longer enforced.
The first really successful treatment was artificial pneumothorax. In this treatment, air was pumped into the patient’s thoracic cavity until its pressure caused the collapse of the affected lobe of the lung. With the lesion no longer being alternately stretched and collapsed by the inflation of the lungs, the body’s defences were sometimes able to encase the tubercle in scar tissue, cutting of the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the bacteria and causing the lesion to become dormant. In the late 30’s, sulfonamide drugs appeared, and revolutionised the treatment of TB. After WWII antibiotics cleared the white wards altogether. Mass screenings by X-ray of the chest and antibody test were organised to try to wipe or the disease by treating everyone who had it.
Even a successful treatment of tuberculosis will leave scars and cavities in the lung, and of course where-ever else tubercules have developed (lymph nodes, joints, skin, gut, bodies of connective tissue, the meninges).
Tubercules are or were sometimes excised surgically, but I don’t know much about that.
Pulmonary tuberculosis is still a prominent cause of death in third-world countries and third-world enclaves in rich ones, eg. native reservations and among the inner-city poor. It flares up in times of war and other severe disturbance of social services. TB infection is very dangerous to people with AIDS. And antibiotic-resistant strains are starting to be reported, which threaten that it might once again become an important issue in public health.
You ought to find all the information you want in the article on ‘tuberculosis’ in any decent encyclopaedia.
Regards,
Agback
Thank you both for your answers! Agback, your answer really helped a lot! Thank you both again!!
Note that if you’re reading a family history that says “Uncle Joe died of consumption in 1867.” you shouldn’t assume it was TB. People weren’t that great at understanding and diagnosing diseases back then. (And in many areas of rural US before WWII.) Could be TB, chronic pneumonia, asthma related, etc.
In fact, reading “consumption” instead of “TB” flags it as a dubious diagnosis to me.
Tuberculosis took the life of one of my favorite poets, John Keats. He died in a house next to the Spanish Steps in Rome, and is buried just outside the city.
Great answer, Agback. I believe that the WHO declared TB to be a global emergency again in 2000. TB is a very slow growing and very tough organism even before exposure to antibiotics, and people have to take antibiotics for months or years before they’re really cleared of illness. Because people don’t like to stay on their treatments, such a long regimen time means that TB gets resistant very quickly. It’s also quite contagious and kills millions of people each year.
My girlfriend’s father is a pulmonary doctor and tells horror stories of former Communist bloc prisons filled with drug-resistant TB infected prisoners. He contends that they’ll all be out in a few decades and wreck civilization as we know it. That might be a little pessimistic, but TB is probably something to really watch out for in the future – especially in Africa and Asia with the rise in HIV infections. Quadgop will probably be along presently to set us all straight.
Agback: Thanks for a VERY informitave answer to to OP.
Stick around!
BTW, Do you teach medicine?
Agback
Superb summary! One minor addition: before more radical treatments became available, the deal with sanatoriums (fresh air apart) was to provide stringent bed-rest, where the lack of movement and exertion kept the lungs reasonably still, and again gave some chance that the body could wall off the infection.
In the Victorian era, consumption was almost a “romantic” disease. The consumptive look was in, just as heroin chic was popular a few years ago. The pale skin, and fragile air of a TB patient was the standard of beauty for a Victorian woman.
No, though I have sometimes taught economics and statistics. It just so happens that I was reading a medical textbook at the beach over the Christmas holidays. This is something that more rented holiday-houses ought to have on the bookshelves. And there were textbooks of surgery, biochemistry, forensic pathology, organic chemistry, statistics, and a few other subjects as well.
Regards,
Agback