The Next Pandemic - Tuberculosis: The Oldest Disease of Mankind Rising One More Time

摘要

Mycobacterium tuberculosis was first isolated on 24^th March 1882 by a German Physician Robert Koch, who received a Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1905 ¹. Tuberculosis is one of the oldest diseases in the history of mankind with evidence of tubercular decay found in some Egyptian mummies from 3000-2400 BC ². The study of tuberculosis was also known as phthisiatry from phthisis, the Greek term for tuberculosis. Hippocrates identified phthisis as the most widespread disease of the time which involved the coughing up of blood, fever and was almost always fatal ³. Avicenna first identified that pulmonary TB was an infectious disease and developed the method of quarantine in order to limit the spread of disease ^{4 & 5}. The disease was given the name of tuberculosis in 1839 by JL Schonlein ⁶.