Tuberculosis has plagued the World for many centuries. In the beginning the disease had no bias. Everyone was infected equally and everyone died equally. This was mainly because there was no cure whatsoever. The disease seemingly ate you from the inside out. Those that were infected would continually lose weight, eventually TB would completely consume you and you would die.

While TB was a very terrible disease it did help to settle the western world. Because of the horrible cough it was thought that better air quality could help your lungs recover. There was promise that moving west and into the mountains in places such as Colorado could have a beneficial effect on your health. Many cities sprang up because of this including Denver and Los Angeles. Unfortunately this theory of better air quality was mostly just a myth and some people got even sicker. Another issue with infected people moving west was that there were hundreds of thousands of sick individuals moving into large cities out west and infecting others.

In the U.S. there were many ways that people tried to ward off infection. For instance there was a major change in appearance and clothing during the early 1900’s. Women’s skirts got shorter to avoid getting in the mud, men got rid of their beards as to cut down on potentially carrying germs in the hair and infecting family members, and there were many parks and playgrounds built to get people to go outside and get fresh air. There was also a major improvement in personal hygiene during this period.

Not only did people’s clothing change but around this time was when many people began to add porches and decks to their houses. Due to how crowded sanatoriums were many people were forced to stay home to get better. There was a need to be outside just like you would be at a sanatorium so they built a deck or a porch. This has changed how we live today because almost every middle class american and up has a deck or porch of some sort.

In wealthy parts of the World today it is very easy to get drugs for TB. It has almost been completely eradicated in the United States and other first world countries because of the advances that have been made in medicine, but it is still a huge issue in third world countries like we saw in the video on Friday. In Swaziland, Africa for instance TB is one of he main causes of death. There is no great treatment here for the infected and many are taken from their homes to go live in hospitals for years to try and get well. The main problem in countries like this is the prevalence of HIV as well as TB. Because many people’s immune systems are already very weak due to HIV they are more susceptible of getting TB, and more likely to die from it because their body can’t fend off the disease. In these places the drugs that are used to fight TB are so poisonous to your body that many people cannot keep them down, there are suicides, as well as many others who refuse treatment because it is so horrific. In these parts of the world TB has really not changed one bit. There is seemingly no cure for it, just like in the early 1900’s across the World. It is like a tiny flash in the past of what the disease can do to a population.

Luckily for humans, the disease is on the verge of being eradicated. There are very few countries left in the world that have a major issue with TB, and hopefully within the next 20-30 years there will be no more cases of the disease at all once modern medicine can get into places like Swaziland, Africa.