Tuberculosis is a disease that is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and mainly effects the lungs. TB is thought to have appeared anywhere from 20,000-15,000 years ago and has been documented roughly 5,000 years ago in Egypt. Since the first documented cases of TB, the disease has progressed over many years up until the present day…at this rate, we are unsure if TB will be completely eradicated.
The significant TB epidemic started in 17th century Europe and traveled to America in the 18th and 19th centuries. It spread significantly fast because of the poor sanitary conditions of European and
American cities as well as the close living quarters shared by many tenants. It spread so quickly and abruptly that it killed nearly 1,000 per every 100,000 people.
As immigration to America began to occur at higher rates, the tenements began to quickly overcrowd and spread TB. Contributing factors included poor working spaces, which often had poor ventilation and lighting, and mud cellars which required people to live in filthy conditions. These factors led to many public education works that would tell people to cover their cough, not spit, and stay out of harms way with their actions.
TB also started to evolve into drug-resistant forms, which were much harder to treat. This is because the strains get used to having the antibiotic in a persons system and as they continually tried to treat the disease, it would become immune to said treatment. This created a huge problem for people trying to get rid of the horrible disease. Additionally, if somebody already had a compromised immune system from another disease such as HIV, they were ineffective in trying to treat the TB because it could fully overtake the system. This has led to very difficult attempts to eradicate the disease because it is ever evolving.
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