Tuberculosis has existed since 2000 BC. There has been evidence of tubercles in mummified Egyptian mummies dating around 2400 BC with clear symptoms of the disease. The Greeks were the people to give the disease it’s name tuberculosis which means small lumps. The major epidemics of tuberculosis were in the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth century, which mainly affected the Untied States and Europe.Little was known about how to fight or cure tuberculosis and there was also little research done on tuberculosis. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that great strives was made in helping find a cure for tuberculosis. In 1882 Robert Koch discovered a staining technique that eventually let him see the bacteria mycobacterium tuberculosis. An American physician Edward Trudeus built the first American sanatorium, because of his experiences with tuberculosis. By 1930 the United States had 600 sanatoriums with a total of 84,000 beds. Bacteriologists Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin worked with a violent strain of tuberculosis at the Pasteur Institute. In 1924 they developed a vaccination called BCG. They first administered the BCG vaccine to a young boy who was at a very high risk of developing Tuberculosis. The vaccine was successful and the newborn never developed the disease. Then in 1944 microbiologist Selman Waksman isolated an anti tuberculosis antibiotic, antinomyein but was too toxic for humans or animals to use. In 1943 Waksman discovered streptomycin a substance from streptomyes griseus that killed the bacteria mycobacterium tuberculosis, being the modern era of antibiotic therapy. With the use of antibiotics, tuberculosis decreased through out the world for the next thirty years. Mortality rates dropped sharply. In the United States tuberculosis dropped from 188 per 100,000 people in 1980 to about 1 per 100,000 people in 1980. The new cure for Tuberculosis was working so well that medical experts expected that...
