6/1/2023 0 Comments Consumption illnessIt provided a romantic demise for the heroines of operas such as La Traviata and La Bohème. It claimed many famous victims, including the poets John Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson and the novelists George Orwell and the Brontë sisters. That’s right-back in the 1800s, if you had to die, consumption was the way to go. (Tuberculosis causes terribly painful coughs that cause you to choke-actually choke-on your own blood.) Sounds horrible, right? Believe it or not, once upon a time, it was considered stylish. It got its original name because it seemed to “consume” its victims, leading to rapid weight loss, fever, night sweats, and coughs that produced blood. It was and is a highly contagious disease, mainly of the lungs. It was called consumption then it’s now known as tuberculosis, or TB. It wasn’t until the 1800s and the Industrial Revolution, however, that it became a widespread epidemic. This disease has always been around wherever groups of humans live together-there’s evidence of Egyptian mummies who died of it around 4000 BC. ![]() In 1815, one in four deaths in England was attributed to the illness in 1918 it was responsible for one in six deaths in France. The disease in question was spread via coughing and sneezing, and people were dropping like flies. ![]() It was the 19th and early 20th century in the Western world, and there was no such thing as widespread sanitation. Once upon a time, a disease sparked a beauty revolution.
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