Consumption
In
the book The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker, consumption, now known
as tuberculosis, was a big problem. The main character in the book,
Lucas Whitaker lost most of his family from tuberculosis. He was the
only one in his family who didn’t catch the disease. After his family
members died Lucas Whitaker was alone with no where to go.
Tuberculosis can be very harmful on people who don’t
treat it correctly. Now people don’t worry about tuberculosis because
it has a cure. Anybody can get tuberculosis. The part where tuberculosis
affects the most is the lungs and the brain. If tuberculosis doesn’t get
treated it can damage or destroy the organ sometimes leading to death.
Today tuberculosis affects mostly people with Aids
or HIV. Signs of tuberculosis are: weight loss, fever, night sweats,
constant tiredness, appetite loss, and a cough that hangs on. Tuberculosis
looks like it’s sucking the life out of you. In the book people believed
that the first person to die from this in a family is the one sucking the
life from the other family members. They also believed in a cure
for tuberculosis. They believed that you could take the heart out
of the first person who died, burn it, and let the person who is infected
with the disease smell it and they would be tuberculosis free, but that
was just superstition, which means that it wasn’t true.
This disease doesn’t just affect humans, it also
occurs in animals especially in livestock such as cattle, hogs, and poultry.
Tuberculosis is caused by rod-shaped bacteria called tubercle bacilli.
A German man called Robert Kock discovered tubercle bacilli in the year
of 1882. Mycrobacterium is the group tubercle bacilli belong to.
Tubercle bacilli must have oxygen to live. If your defenses are weak
you can get infected shortly after it enters your body. It is possible
that after many years the inactive tuberculosis becomes active cause of
the weakened defenses. The germs can break out of the wall, begin
multiplying and damage the lungs or other organs.
Some people have advanced tuberculosis. Advanced
tuberculosis means that the tuberculosis that they have is more advanced
than ordinary tuberculosis. People who have advanced tuberculosis
sometimes even cough out blood. People with only active tuberculosis
will have mild symptoms. They might be spreading germs without even
knowing.
In Lucas Whitaker, some people believed that you could take the heart
out of the first person who died, burn it, and let the person who is infected
with the disease smell it and they would be tuberculosis free, but that
was just superstition, which means that it wasn’t true. Do you have any
superstitions or medical cures in your family? Tell us about it in our Guestbook,
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