Grace Carlson Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main Page


Grace Carlson

Tuberculosis – Ancient Enemy

(17 May 1948)


From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 20, 17 May 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).



As long ago as the 4th century B.C., the Greek physician, Hippocrates described tuberculosis so graphically that his writings about this disease stand as a medical classic. Hippocrates named the disease, “phthisis,” which means “wasting,” a marked characteristic of the last stage of tuberculosis.

But tuberculosis was known to the human race long before Hippocrates’ time. Mummies found in the tombs of Egypt show definite signs of tuberculosis. The characteristic marks of this disease have also been observed on the bones of persons who died long before history was recorded.

Not until 1882 when the germ cause of tuberculosis was discovered was there any real progress in the fight against this age-old disease. It was in that year that Robert Koch identified the tubercle bacillus and proved conclusively that it is the direct cause of tuberculosis.

The tubercle bacillus is a germ so small that it can gain entrance to the body in specks of dust or in the tiny droplets sprayed out in coughing or sneezing. Tubercle bacilli live for hours in moist sputum and may even resist drying and freezing. The germ is passed from person to person in various ways – through kissing an infected person, using his or her personal toilet articles, breathing in germs which have been sprayed into the air by a tubercular patient’s cough, using inadequately washed dishes on which tubercle baccilli may have been deposited by the previous user.

When tubercle bacilli get into the body, they may be coughed out before they do any damage or they may be destroyed by the white cells of the blood. If they get past the body’s first lines of defense, they are likely to find a place in the lungs. Since the tubercle bacillus is a foreign agent in the body, the body’s next line of defense is to wall off the invader. A shell is formed around the bacilli, which is called a tubercle because it looks like a bulb. Inside the tubercle, the bacilli continue to grow and to destroy the small amount of lung substance left to them. In time, a hard gritty substance called calcium takes the place of the destroyed lung substance.

Most city-dwellers, while growing up, become slightly infected by tubercle bacilli, but never develop active cases of tuberculosis. So long as the body keeps the upper hand, everything goes well, but if the bacilli invade the body in great numbers and the general resistance is low, an active case of tuberculosis will develop. Poverty, overwork, malnutrition and worry are the great allies of tuberculosis germs because they break down the body’s resistance.

Great progress has been made in the fight against tuberculosis but this disease still takes a toll of 53,000 lives every year in the U.S. Tuberculosis is still an enemy of mankind.


Grace Carlson Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers’ Index  |   ETOL Main Page

Last updated: 30 January 2022