Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious disease, and throughout human history, it has been permanently opening numerous medical and legal questions, for which the answers are implied by the current social circumstances. In ancient times, insufficient knowledge of the etiopathogenesis of TB resulted in discrimination and isolation of patients. In the Middle Ages, kings used TB as a disease to secure their political power over the citizens, while TB culturally took a romanticized form during the 19th and 20th centuries, together with a great social phobia of contagion, disease, and dying on the other hand. Stereotypes were formed around all TB victims, while society tried to understand the nature of the disease and establish a civilizational relationship with it as a health problem having numerous social implications. Modern public health measures for the control of the TB pandemic were established after the discovery of the Koch bacillus in the 19th century. The invention and mass use of the BCG vaccine, the discovery of streptomycin and isoniazid, and the new era of TB treatment, with the consequent emergence of drug resistance, coepidemic with AIDS, neglect of public health facilities and the current COVID-19 pandemics threaten many legal rights of the infected and the sick and pose new challenges in its global elimination. Numerous attempts by society over the centuries to devise preventive and therapeutic measures for TB, through different levels of social obligations and activities, have had and continue to have a profound impact on the human race, shaping its further response to the victims of this deadly disease.
References
1.
Fogel N. Tuberculosis: A disease without boundaries. Tuberculosis. 2015;95(5):527–31.
2.
Muthu DJAC. The Sanatorium Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis-Is It a Success? Bristol Med Chir J. 1883;25(95):50–4.
3.
Fairchild AL, Oppenheimer GM. Public health nihilism vs pragmatism: history, politics, and the control of tuberculosis. American Journal of Public Health. 1998;88(7):1105–17.
4.
Young M. A Study Of The Adjustment Of Patients Discharged From The Jefferson Tuberculosis Sanatorium Between November 1945. And. 1946;428:1–37.
5.
Wilson PK. Confronting “Hereditary” Disease: Eugenic Attempts to Eliminate Tuberculosis in Progressive Era America. Journal of Medical Humanities. 2006;27(1):19–37.
6.
Caverhill TFS, Calwell Q, Guillemard BJ. A Discussion On The Open-Air Or Hygienic Treatment Of Consumption. Br Med J. 1898;2:946–9.
7.
Daniel TM. The history of tuberculosis. Respiratory Medicine. 2006;100(11):1862–70.
8.
Daniel TM. Leon Charles Albert Calmette and BCG vaccine. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 2005;9:205–6.
9.
Calmette A. On preventive vaccination of the new-born against tuberculosis by B.C.G. British Journal of Tuberculosis. 1928;22(4):161–5.
10.
Davies TW, Davies M. Mass radiography in Wales experience with a mobile unit. British Journal of Tuberculosis and Diseases of the Chest. 1945;39(1):23–37.
11.
Comstock GW. The International Tuberculosis Campaign: A Pioneering Venture in Mass Vaccination and Research. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 1994;19(3):528–40.
12.
Marx F, Skachkova E, Son I, Strelis A, Urazova O, Hahn H, et al. Die Kontrolle der Tuberkulose in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion am Beispiel Russlands. Pneumologie. 2009;63(05):253–60.
13.
Schatz A, Bugle E, Waksman SA. Streptomycin, a Substance Exhibiting Antibiotic Activity Against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria.* . Experimental Biology and Medicine. 1944;55(1):66–9.
14.
Weitzman D, de Wend Cayley FE, Wingfield AL. Streptomycin in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. British Journal of Tuberculosis and Diseases of the Chest. 1950;44(4):98–104.
15.
Muthu DJAC. Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Its Etiology and Treatment, a Record of 22 Years’ Observation and Work in Open-air Sanatoria. William Wood & Company. 1922:227–90.
16.
Keshavjee S, Farmer PE. Tuberculosis, Drug Resistance, and the History of Modern Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine. 2012;367(10):931–6.
17.
Comas I, Gagneux S. The Past and Future of Tuberculosis Research. PLoS Pathogens. 5(10):e1000600.
18.
World Health Organization. 2014.
19.
Partnership STOPTB. Legal environment assessments for tuberculosis: an operational guide. 2017;
20.
Global tuberculosis report 2016. 2016;
21.
Out of step 2015: TB policies in 24 countries. 2015;
22.
Organization WH. The end TB strategy. World Health Organization. 2015;
23.
Saunders MJ, Evans CA. COVID-19, tuberculosis and poverty: preventing a perfect storm. European Respiratory Journal. 2020;56(1):2001348.
24.
Glaziou P. Predicted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global tuberculosis deaths in 2020.
Wear A. J. N. Hays. The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 361. Cloth $50.00, paper $24.00. The American Historical Review. 2000;105(5):1700–1.
30.
MacDonald EM, Izzo AA. Tuberculosis Vaccine Development — Its History and Future Directions. Tuberculosis - Expanding Knowledge.
31.
Organisation WH. Global Tuberculosis Report 2018. World Health Organization: Geneva. 2018:1–7.
32.
Parmet WE. Legal Power and Legal Rights — Isolation and Quarantine in the Case of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis. New England Journal of Medicine. 2007;357(5):433–5.
33.
Gittler J. Controlling Resurgent Tuberculosis: Public Health Agencies, Public Policy, and Law. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. 1994;19(1):107–47.
34.
Luca S, Mihaescu T. History of BCG Vaccine. Maedica (Buchar. 2013;8(1):53–8.
35.
Hayman J. MYCOBACTERIUM ULCERANS: AN INFECTION FROM JURASSIC TIME? The Lancet. 1984;324(8410):1015–6.
36.
Lauer SA. The Social Impact of the Misconceptions Surrounding Tuberculosis. The Iowa historical review. 7:55–78.
37.
Daniel VS, Daniel TM. Old Testament Biblical References to Tuberculosis. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 1999;29(6):1557–8.
38.
Waksman SA. The Conquest of Tuberculosis. 1964.
39.
Pezzella AT. History of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Thoracic Surgery Clinics. 2019;29(1):1–17.
40.
Pormann PE, Karimullah KI. The Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms: Introduction. Oriens. 2017;45(1–2):1–52.
41.
DEATH AND EPIDEMIC DISEASE IN CLASSICAL ATHENS. Death and Disease in the Ancient City. 2002. p. 67–76.
42.
Cushing A. Illness and health in the Ancient World. Collegian. 1998;5(3):44.
43.
Barberis I, Bragazzi NL, Galluzzo L. The History Of Tuberculosis: From The First Historical Records To The Isolation Of Koch’s Bacillus. J Prev Med Hyg. 2017;58:9–12.
44.
Santacroce L, Bottalico L, Charitos I. Greek Medicine Practice at Ancient Rome: The Physician Molecularist Asclepiades. Medicines. 4(4):92.
45.
Bray FN, Alsaidan M, Simmons BJ, Falto-Aizpurua LA, Nouri K. Scrofula and the Divine Right of Royalty. JAMA Dermatology. 2015;151(7):702.
46.
Brăilean T, Plopeanu AP. Christianity and Political Democracy in the Middle Ages and Modern Times. Human & Social Studies Research and Practice. 2013;2(2).
47.
Sabbatini S. Historical insights into tuberculosis. Girolamo Fracastoro’s intuition on the transmission of tuberculosis and his opponents. History of an idea. Infez Med. 2004;12(4):284–91.
48.
Barberis I, Bragazzi NL, Galluzzo L. The history of tuberculosis: from the first historical records to the isolation of Koch’s bacillus. J Prev Med Hyg. 2017;58(1):9–12.
49.
The White Plague Continues. Chapter 6. 2003;262–72.
50.
Morens DM. At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 8(11):1353–8.
51.
Bell ME. Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892. Anthropology and Humanism. 2006;31(2):124–40.
52.
Sledzik PS, Bellantoni N. Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 1994;94(2):269–74.
53.
Hancox M. Bovine tuberculosis: milk and meat safety. The Lancet. 2002;359(9307):706–7.
54.
OLMSTEAD AL, RHODE PW. An Impossible Undertaking: The Eradication of Bovine Tuberculosis in the United States. The Journal of Economic History. 2004;64(3):734–72.
55.
E. Abrams J. “Spitting Is Dangerous, Indecent, and against the Law!” Legislating Health Behavior during the American Tuberculosis Crusade. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 2013;68(3):416–50.
56.
Coomber R, Moyle L, Pavlidis A. Public Spitting in ‘Developing’ Nations of the Global South: Harmless Embedded Practice or Disgusting, Harmful and Deviant? The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. 2018. p. 493–520.
The statements, opinions and data contained in the journal are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publisher and the editor(s). We stay neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
