What is TB?

Tuberculosis is an old disease. Even the ancient Greeks suffered from it. But it did not get its name until 1882. In that year a scientist named Robert Koch discovered the germ that causes tuberculosis. He named it the "tubercle bacillus." From that we get the word "tuberculosis." Before 1882 most lung diseases were called "consumption." It took nearly 20 years before the terms "tuberculosis" and "TB" were commonly used.

Some people think that tuberculosis is only a lung disease. This is not true. TB can affect any part of the body. Many people in Newfoundland, for example, had TB in their kidneys, bones, stomachs and spines.

How is TB Spread?

Most people get TB by breathing air that carries the TB microbe. How does the microbe get into the air? People who already have the disease cough, sneez, or spit. While the practice is no longer common (except among baseball players), many men used to chew tobacco. They would spit the tobacco juice into a container called a spittoon. But sometimes they would not use the spittoon. Sometimes they missed. This was very unhealthy. Every time someone with TB spit, they spread millions of TB microbes. In 1908 in Bonavista, a Doctor Rutherford had this to say about tobacco spitting:

It should be enough that a habit is disgusting for those who practice it to give it up for decency's sake....And it should be more than enough that a practice is dangerous, for it to be shunned for Health's sake, but when a habit is both disgusting and dangerous, it must be stopped for the Country's sake.³

But it was hard to make people stop. In a story told by Dr. Rutherford, a man who had the disease refused to use the spittoon in his hospital room. When asked why, he said he didn't feel right using it because it had "such a pretty floral design."

There are also other ways to get TB. Sometimes children got it by drinking infected milk. When this happened they would get TB in their stomachs.