Member-only story
Poverty, Political Exploitation and the Spread of Tuberculosis
By: Andy Heikkila
The history of the spread of Tuberculosis is inextricably linked to colonial and racist ventures, such as gold mining in South Africa.
The very first recorded case of tuberculosis was contracted by an Egyptian woman named Irtyersenu, who died around 600 BC. Interestingly, her disease stumped modern experts and academics for over a century. Pathologists originally determined her cause of death to be ovarian cancer sometime in the 1820s. It wasn’t until the 1980s that anyone disputed this, pointing to inflammation in Irtyersenu’s lungs as worthy of investigation.
In 2009, scientists finally determined the true cause of death when they found tuberculosis organisms in samples of tissue from all over Irtyersenu’s body. This discovery made her the first known victim of tuberculosis (commonly referred to as “TB”) ever described. Unfortunately, TB is still a deadly and rampant human affliction, claiming the lives of 1.7 million people in 2016 alone.
What Exactly Is Tuberculosis?
TB might be more common than you realize with an estimated one in three people on the planet infected with the mycobacterium that causes TB, a sort of precursor to the full-blown disease.
