The interpretation of pulmonary tuberculosis in the 18th century

Pulmonary tuberculosis took on alarming proportions in 18th-century Europe. This study examines the ways learned medical practitioners presented the causes of the malady in Great Britain and France, by analyzing 12 medical treatises. Four etiological models appear to have dominated medical thinking in this context: theories that emphasize contagion; those which attribute the cause to physiological disorders; those which find the origin in hereditary predispositions; and those theories which observe a link with behaviour and lifestyles. The study also shows how one of these theories-the hereditary theory-eventually triumphed over the others and became dominant for the better part of the 19th century, and will be examined within the context of the growth of liberal and individualist ideology.