The Great White Plague

Tuberculosis–otherwise known as the White Plague or Pott’s disease–was an inevitable ticket to death in Europe during the 1650s; the combination of a dense population and and abysmal sanitary conditions served as a breeding ground for the illness. Evading the illness became the number one goal in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that fear of an early death vis-a-vis high fever and coughing up blood incentivized the Children’s Preventorium – “residential institutions for children,” as Cynthia Connolly defines it. These Preventoria were the early building blocks to rising above a society encumbered by fear of tuberculosis.

Given the societal conditions that allowed for the propagation of tuberculosis, the Children’s Preventorium, according to Connolly, “rescued” lower class children from the poor sanitary conditions in which they lived and fortressed them with “[blended] features of a hospital, sanatorium, and school, while endeavoring to imbue its patients with the values of an idealized middle-class life home” (Connolly 2). The method by which these children were secluded from the disease can be considered almost a reverse quarantine; but, instead of isolating the sick from society, the Preventorium isolated the healthy (a considerably smaller percentage of society) from the rest of the world, guaranteeing their safety and preventing an early, gruesome death. And–once again– we see in Connolly’s study that tuberculosis proliferated throughout the continent as a result of high population and poor living conditions. So, in a way, Connolly’s study echoes a common historical problem: a failure to recognize the relationship between illness and living conditions.

Similar to Connolly’s study, which centers on a particular group of people (children), J. Madison Taylor’s study focuses on the effect of tuberculosis on the African American community in the United States. His opening statement, “A rich man may get along with poor health and not suffer for essentials of life,” functions as the thesis statement for his article and paragons the recurring dilemma in our discussion of tuberculosis (160). In a way, he conflates poverty with color, and contends that “in order that the African American shall survive or even to maintain a fair measure of health, it is imperative that he shall keep out of the big cities and live in the open countries (162); thus suggesting that poor living conditions perpetuate the horrific disease. In addition to this argument, Taylor examines the traits of an African or African-American that make him or her more susceptible to the disease, such as “leaky skin” or the “wide nostril.” Taylor argues that is it necessary that the black population adapt to these weaknesses and learn how to cope with them to survive as a race. Despite Taylor’s discussion of narcotic drugs, it is striking that his implication of poor living conditions and disease parallels nearly every study we’ve examined thus far in this semester.

With that, I pose a question: Is the government entirely to blame for the proliferation of diseases such as tuberculosis? Certainly, they oversee the department of health, whose responsibility it is to ensure our safety; but, in the annals of American history, we see the department of health continually falling short of its duties to keep the population safe and the country’s citizens consequently falling victims to tragic deaths. (I realize that the United States isn’t the only country we’re examining, but for the sake of narrowing down conversation a bit, I’m gearing this question specifically toward the U.S.)