Overview of Tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis has plagued mankind for millennia, causing disease, deformity, and death since prehistoric times. Mummies from ancient civilizations have been found to have evidence of tuberculosis, and the organism has been amplified from archeological relics from more than 5000 years ago [1]. While pulmonary tuberculosis is and most likely always has been the most common form of the disease, extrapulmonary forms of tuberculosis have a prominent place in history. Scrofula, tuberculosis of the cervical lymph nodes, was said to have been cured by the royal touch of kings, from King Clovis of France in the fifth century to Edward the Confessor, King of England in the eleventh century, and subsequently. Pott’s disease, tuberculosis of the spine which can cause grave deformity, is the possible cause of the gibbus affliction of Quasimodo, the famed Hunchback of Notre Dame. Tuberculosis was the actual cause of death for many famous literary figures, from the Bronte sisters to Robert Louis Stephenson to Stephen Crane.