Introduction: Project Consumption

Tuberculosis, or TB for short, has undergone many iterations throughout the years it has infected history’s pages. Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates coined the term “phthisis,” or “wasting away” to describe the inexplicable symptoms that were claiming the lives of many in their society. Later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term “consumption” was adopted, and finally, in 1834, the term “tuberculosis” became the reigning title of the disease, as it roughly translates to “a lump of small swellings” from both Greek and Latin roots1,2.

Moral of the story, Tuberculosis has had a boatload of names to describe the same thing. I’m sure you’ve already taken a guess at it, but TB wasn’t given these names haphazardly. Naturally, after seeing countless people in your society inexplicably falling victim to debilitating fevers, coughing up blood, and most notably, the literal degeneration from wasting and malnutrition, you too would probably come up with a similar description of TB. Many theories flooded these places to justify these deaths, from declaring phthisis was inherited to claiming it was caused by anxiety and hunger in ancient India3. All of these theories proved to be false, but the many lives TB took remained. 

TB remains one of the top ten leading causes of death, and it returned to being the most infectious deadly disease in 2023 after being temporarily dethroned by COVID-19 in 2021. In 2023, around 10.8 million people had TB, and sadly 1.25 million people died from it4. Despite these numbers, there has been little public protest, and TB has remained a quiet but persistent burden on society—the disease is quietly asked to be forgotten as a plague of the past, a grim mark on history’s pages, but nothing more. 

This leaves us with the main questions: What really is Tuberculosis? How is it spread and more importantly why is it still so deadly today even though we’ve found a cure for it? Is it a public health crisis or a social crisis or both? These are the questions Project Consumption will explore, however there are still so many unanswered questions and solutions that remain unresolved. I will do my best to share everything I know about this disease, so I’ve included the books I read to make this website here if you want to give the books a read yourself! Thank you for reading, and welcome to Project Consumption. 

References

1. CDC. (2024, December 9). History of World TB Day. World TB Day; CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/world-tb-day/history/index.html

2. Etymologia: tuberculosis. (2005). Emerging Infectious Diseases, 12(5), 751–751. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid1205.et1205

3. Frith, J. (2011). History of Tuberculosis. Part 1 – Phthisis, consumption and the White Plague. Jmvh.org. https://jmvh.org/article/history-of-tuberculosis-part-1-phthisis-consumption-and-the-white-plague/

4. ‌World Health Organization. (2025, March 14). Tuberculosis. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis