The disease of tuberculosis, has been known for centuries. Mummies from the Egyptian pre-dynastic era and the Peruvian pre-Columbian era show typical vertebral lesions. Tuberculosis was well known in classical Greece, where it was called phthisis. Hippocrates clearly recognized tuberculosis and understood its clinical presentation.
The oldest evidence for human tuberculosis was found in a Neolithic infant and woman in a 9000-year-old settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In 1720, for the first time, the infectious origin of tuberculosis was conjectured by the English physician Benjamin Marten, in his publication “A new theory of Consumption.”
Both terms consumption and phthisis were used in the 17th and 18th centuries, until in the mid-19th century Johann Lukas Schönlein coined the term “tuberculosis”.
Understanding of the pathogenesis of tuberculosis began with the work of Theophile Laennec at the beginning of the 19th century and was further advanced by the demonstration of the transmissibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection by Jean-Antoine Villemin in 1865.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, then known as the "tubercle bacillus," was first described on March 24, 1882 by Robert Koch. Using the methylene blue staining recommended by Paul Ehrlich, he identified, isolated and cultivated the bacillus in animal serum. Finally, he reproduced the disease by inoculating the bacillus into laboratory animals.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the etiologic agent of tuberculosis in humans. Humans are the only reservoir for the bacterium. Robert Koch presented this extraordinary result to the society of Physiology in Berlin on 24 March 1882. Further molecular analysis of these very first isolates confirmed the identification of M. tuberculosis and indicated that Koch’s isolates belong to the ‘modern’ lineage of M. tuberculosis.
Clemens von Pirquet developed the tuberculin skin test in 1907 and 3 years later used it to demonstrate latent tuberculous infection in asymptomatic children. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries sanatoria developed for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis.
Discovery of tuberculosis
Learn history of medicine, learn how the medicine provide explanations for birth, death and disease. History of medicine shows how ideas have developed over the centuries, and medicine had arrived at its modern state through the course of history.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
The most popular articles
-
Biography of Hippocrates Hippocrates is referred to ‘father of medicine’ in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the ...
-
Jean-Martin Charcot (29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was the son of a carriage-maker. He was the son and grandson of Parisian carriage ma...
-
Folic acid (vitamin B9) is important in a number of human metabolic pathways as well as being needed for nucleic acid synthesis, growth and ...
-
According to the CDC, arthritis accounts for 18% or nearly 9 million reports of disability, making it the number one cause of adult disabili...
-
In 1665 first scientific journals are published: the French Journal des scavans and the English Proceeding of the Royal Society , following ...
-
Free radicals are chemical species which have unpaired electrons on the boundary (atomic or molecular) orbitals. The term “radical” was firs...
-
Ebola, previously known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal disease in humans. Similar cases of hemorrhagic fever to Marbur...
-
In the early 1900s an Italian radiologist named Alessandro Vallebona invented tomography which used radiographic film to see a single slice ...