tuberculosis is a terrible, nasty disease... it is often fatal..
if you once contracted it, you have it forever...--in theory, today, that is no longer true.. but the 'treatment (with intense antibotics) still takes years! unfortunately, because it takes so long, many don't complete the antibotic treatment, and many strains of TB are drug resistant.

-in otherwise healthy individuals, TB can often be keep at 'bay' by the bodies natural immuno/defence systems--so while often fatal it may not become a serious problem for 20 to 30 years.

but, if you become ill with something else, TB will 'take the opportunity to 'break out'-- before drugs, people would have 'acute attacks', get 'better'(show fewer symptoms) on and off over the course of many years, but each 'attack' tended to leave them weaker. it was a chronic, debilitating disease.

TB(bacterium) love 'oxygen' which is why it most commonly 'infects' the lungs, but it can infect the brain/spinal cord, (and commonly does when contracted in-utero-- the 'hunchback of ND' might well have been born to a consuptive mother.)

TB is/was called 'consuption'-because (in constrast to cancer that causes tumors) it 'eat away' tissue.-- the lung tissue TB destroys reduces 'oxygentation' of the blood, so it make those with disease weak, (tired)

one 'pre-(effective)drug' cure was to collapse a lung -- a 'cure' they discovered when a TB 'ate' a hole through a lung wall and caused the lung to collapse on its own (it is rather painful)-- the collapse often helped 'cure' the disease.

we now know that the TB bacterium can't survive UV light-- so fresh outdoors and sunlight were another effective cure (Dr's didn't know why, but they knew that staying indoors, and darkness made TB more 'contagous', and sunlight made it less so.. many hospitals, today, (especially the ER area) have UV lights to help 'clean the air'--since TB is on the rise again in urban area's.

my grandfather had TB, and when we went to ireland to see grandparents, my sister 'caught'TB--she was young, healthy, we played out in the sun (no one else caught it, and to be fair, it should have been me, i spent more time with Grandfather).
we all had to be tested, once D's test/xray came back. my mother, was frantic, and to say she was upset, and felt guilty is one of the understatements of the last century!-- i don't think there is enough server space in universe to detail her reaction.


my other obsession