I'm sorry, I know this probaby isn't hereditary, but they didn't have a general category. What exactly is consumption?? I hear it all the time, but I don't know what it is. I also don't know anything about debility. Could someone explain these diseases? Thanks!

According to my 1916 medical dictionary, with a little help from "Ask Yahoo":
Consumption is an old name for tuberculosis (TB) that describes how the illness wastes away or consumes its victims. TB is "an ancient enemy" that has plagued humankind for more than five thousand years. The Greeks called it phthisis, and Hippocrates advised his medical students against treating it, because it was almost always deadly, and a dead patient was bad for business.

For "debility," the dictionary says "lack or loss of strength." So that is in reality a symptom and not a diagnosis- it could be caused by any number of things.

As the previous poster wrote, Consumption was the name for Tuberculosis. When we think of TB we first think of Respiratory ailment; however, TB can affect all major ogran systems - hence, a new twist to the meaning of Consumption.

Apparently consumption (bovine tuberculosis)was contracted from raw milk of infected cows (before pasteurization). Bovine tuberculosis affected the lymph nodes (frequently in the neck), or the intestines, bones or other organs.

My paternal Ggrandmother died of consumption in Iowa in 1922.

Sandra

Before WWII diagnosis for disease that spread easily like TB could be seen under a microscope. Many people with good immunity had TB which were walled off as granulomas and lived to old age. My mother-in-law had them from 1916 and died in 2001. The law required mandatory institutionalization. There was a crematorium there to stop the spread of disease. If you ceased to have the little critters under the microscope for a defined period of time you got out. It was a pitiful thing from just a sneeze. It became against the law to spit on the sidewalk. And spittoons were banished. Even today TB is not easy to get rid of.
Since it is like any germ, it doesn't care what part of you it feeds off of. But microscopes definitely could ID it. Microscopes go back to the 1700s. The fact that one has it, may leave them with barnacle like nodules especially in the lungs, staying in them all their life. I use to wonder why my mother-in-law try to prove she was good at sports when I didn't see evidence of her being athletic. Her lungs became compromised from TB in childhood. It was a hidden handicap for her. But it also gave her use a sense of witty fun to get through tough times.

The first microscope was recorded in 1590 - by the end of the 17th century they were well established and it was well known that things could be seen but not exactly what they were or what they did. The work on identifying bacteria and proving the connection between them and the disease was not done until the end of the 19th century. A German physiologist, Robert Koch, worked first on anthrax and then on TB (consumption) and in 1882 (March 22nd) he produced absolute proof of the existence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the fact that it caused TB. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905.

Thank you, Halpark. You did a lot more homework than I did. I truly appreciate your input. My husband said the greatest invention that should have been in the Millennium time capsule was sewage treatment. In the days of Jesus Christ in Galilee there were no microscopes to prove the presence of sewage from the greatest Roman technology, indoor toilets. Not tunneling it to run into the salty Mediterranean Sea but into the fresh water Sea of Galilee was quite a hot issue.
So thank you. Technology well understood and used wisely leads to saving lives.
We come a long way in just a bit over 100 years all due to the electrons going through the wire and the sound waves having channels. And even Galilee can read this as soon as anyone else anywhere on Earth. Consumption subdued and knowledge shared. How exciting to be here in history now, able to see into the days gone by so broadly. We have an old TB hospital nearby where our family story brought us all together long before we we're even born.

Thank you, Halpark. You did a lot more homework than I did. I truly appreciate your input. My husband said the greatest invention that should have been in the Millennium time capsule was sewage treatment. In the days of Jesus Christ in Galilee there were no microscopes to prove the presence of sewage from the greatest Roman technology, indoor toilets. Not tunneling it to run into the salty Mediterranean Sea but into the fresh water Sea of Galilee was quite a hot issue.
So thank you. Technology well understood and used wisely leads to saving lives.
We come a long way in just a bit over 100 years all due to the electrons going through the wire and the sound waves having channels. And even Galilee can read this as soon as anyone else anywhere on Earth. Consumption subdued and knowledge shared. How exciting to be here in history now, able to see into the days gone by so broadly. We have an old TB hospital nearby where our family story brought us all together long before we we're even born.