Ahliyah Williams

Dr. Hinks 

Help Received: None Ahliyah Williams

07/17/19

 

Tuberculosis

 

In the book, The Power of Plagues, the author, Irwin W. Sherman makes it a point to say that Tuberculosis is not just an infectious disease, but it is a societal disease that in order to be fully gotten rid of, the first step needs to be the people in society to fix it. In the 1800’s TB was seen as intimate. Society turned the second leading cause of death by an infectious disease into a fantasy for society in the 1800’s. Now in modern society, the disease once being thought of as a “disease of the past”( Frontline. TB Silent Killer. PBS) has made its way back into society more cruel than ever. History of immigrants living in packed tenement housing made people more susceptible to spreading TB. People that experienced malnutrition, HIV, and poverty were all ways that TB was able to affect these people most efficiently. 

 

Tuberculosis is a tremendously infectious disease. TB is spread similar to how a cold is, as easy as a cough or even someone singing. Society once saw the deadly disease,TB, as passionate. In the book,  Illness as a Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag said “TB was, is still thought to produce spells of euphoria… and sexual desire.” The Lady of Camille was a very popular movie that influenced two operas. Showing a lady coughing blood on a white handkerchief, it was symbolizing the red/white colors of a camellia flower. This shows just how much TB was looked at as delicate and beautiful just as a flower. The dying poet Keats painting shows John Keats, a romantic poet beautifully dying from tuberculosis. Although shown as beautiful in the films and paintings, TB was far from beautiful. When TB is in the lungs, it eats it from the inside out. The lungs fill up with blood. Even before death TB makes a person weak and hardly able to do anything. Why is society so important when playing a role in TB? First off italian immigrants in the 19th century came to the US for new opportunities. They lived in tenements that were specifically made to fit many people at once. It was overly-crowded and disgusting to live in. Those horrid conditions gave it more rise for tuberculosis to spread from one person to another and a perfect home for diseases such as TB. 

 

Tuberculosis is a disease that takes advantage of its hosts at their worst times and when something such as HIV is already breaking down a person immune system at rapid rates, TB works with it coherently kill a person. HIV makes a person’s immune system very weak, thats why its name stands for immunodeficiency virus. It literally destroys the very thing that is there to fight off infections, white blood cells. So, when an infectious disease such as tuberculosis comes to an HIV infected person, it is welcomed in by the body. TB is an opportunistic infectious disease meaning that it takes the opportunity of the body whenever the body is weakened, in this case from HIV. Infection with both HIV and TB is called, HIV/TB coinfection because both work together in the body.

 

In The Power of Plagues, Sherman says that TB is societal, that cannot be fixed, and will surely return if not fixed as being an acceptable thing in society. In the film, Silent Killer, tuberculosis has returned in modern day Africa. A young African girl is diagnosed with a strain of resistant TB called Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis that is caused by bacteria that has developed to be resistant to treatment with even the most powerful medications. She went from a free-spirited, dancing and energetic girl to a lonely and sad young girl because the long therapy that she had to go through. TB stopped her childhood from progressing and had an even worse impact on her because of it being multi-resistant. The MDR-TB does not respond to two powerful drugs: isoniazid and rifampin. Being that MDR-TB is harder to treat, the young girl missed out on her graduation. This shows just how serious TB can be with holding one’s life back with being multi-drug resistant and denying treatment. 

 

All in all, tuberculosis is far from beautiful even though being made to seem romantic. Society turned Tuberculosis into something acceptable and even showed the deadly disease throughout films and books. The “disease of the past” appeared in modern African society affecting everyone even young children. Deaths by tuberculosis were drawn out long,  so bad that it targets people that are already affected by other infections such as HIV. Multidrug resistant TB is a strain of tuberculosis that has developed overtime to be resistant to even the most powerful drugs which makes it a powerful disease. Overall what is needed to conquer the People’s Plague or tuberculosis is by not only protecting yourself, but protecting others around you. Keeping yourself distant from people even at the hardest times when it’s family that is closest to you. Since tuberculosis is spread so easily by simply someone coughing or even speaking shows just how much TB is a “peoples plague”. 

 

References

 Dying From TB It Can Be an Awful Way To Die. TBFACTS. ORG.

Immigration. Library of Congress. 

HIV and Opportunistic Infections. AIDSinfo. 

TB and HIV Coinfection. CDC. 

Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Wikipedia.