History of Tuberculosis - Classical Antiquity

Classical Antiquity

The first classical text to mention the disease is Herodotus' Histories in which he relates how the generals of Xerxes abandoned the campaign against the Spartans due to a consumption.

Hippocrates, in Book 1 of his Of the Epidemics, describes the characteristics of the disease: fever, colorless urine, cough resulting in a thick sputa, and loss of thirst and appetite. He notes that most of the sufferers became delirious before they succumbed to the disease. Hippocrates and many other at the time believed phthisis to be hereditary in nature. Curiously, one prominent figure that disagreed with the hereditary nature of phthisis was Aristotle, who believed that it was in fact contagious.

Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to Priscus in which he details the symptoms of phthisis as he saw them in Fannia:

The attacks of fever stick to her, her cough grows upon her, she is in the highest degree emaciated and enfeebled. —Pliny the Younger, Letters VII, 19

Galen proposed a series of therapeutic treatments for the disease, including: opium as a sleeping agent and painkiller; blood letting; a diet of barley water, fish, and fruit. He also described the phyma (tumor) of the lungs, which is thought to correspond to the tubercles that form on the lung as a result of the disease.

Vitruvius noted that "cold in the windpipe, cough, plurisy, phthisis, spitting blood," were common diseases in regions where the wind blew from north to northwest, and advised that walls be so built as to shelter individuals from the winds.

Aretaeus was the first person to rigorously describe the symptoms of the disease in his text De causis et signis diuturnorum morborum:

Voice hoarse; neck slightly bent, tender, not flexible, somewhat extended; fingers slender, but joints thick; of the bones alone the figure remains, for the fleshy parts are wasted; the nails of the fingers crooked, their pulps are shrivelled and flat...Nose sharp, slender; cheeks prominent and red; eyes hollow, brilliant and glittering; swollen, pale or livid in countenance; the slender parts of the jaws rest on the teeth as, as if smiling; otherwise of cadaverous aspect... —De causis et signis diuturnorum morborum, Aretaeus, translated by Francis Adams

In his other book De curatione diuturnorum morborum, he recommends that sufferers travel to high altitudes, travel by sea, eat a good diet and drink plenty of milk.