Topic > tuberculosis, the white death - 962

Tuberculosis or tuberculosis, defined by some as the white death due to the epidemic that broke out in Europe and lasted two hundred years, is usually caused in humans by a microorganism through substrains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is difficult to determine the exact years when tuberculosis first infected humans, but because the disease leaves traces on bones they can be found in archaeological records and are believed to date back to the BC era. Although it is difficult to say whether the bone damage was truly due to tuberculosis, some research shows that it already existed in the 17th and 18th centuries with a high number of cases of tuberculosis, and in 1882 Dr. Robert Koch announced that his discovery of the causative factor of tuberculosis, which is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A tuberculosis bacterium spreads through the air through an infected person speaking, coughing, or sneezing. Because the bacteria are protected by a waxy cell, it takes the body's defense weeks to develop any type of immunity, and this allows the bacteria to multiply exponentially freely within the body. If tuberculosis is left untreated, it will rapidly destroy many tissues, usually starting with the lungs, lymph nodes, and kidneys. When the infection spreads to the lungs, it causes coughing and fluid between the chest wall and lungs, which leads to chest pain, severe shortness of breath, and potential heart failure. Tuberculosis also affects bones and joints which can produce arthritis like pain and characteristic bone damage. Another possibility is that it may affect the fluid around the brain, causing meningitis, which can lead to fever, drowsiness, and ultimately coma and death (Wingerson, 2009). Tuberculosis becomes more deadly in very crowded and unsanitary conditions, as occurred in early Europe and North America, which causes the number of infected to increase once a person is exposed to tuberculosis. Now inside