Know Your Enemy
Scientists mine the tuberculosis genome
The threat of tuberculosis is not a new one. Traces of the disease have been found in ancient mummies, and in the mid-1800s the ailment—then known as consumption—accounted for up to a quarter of the deaths in London, New York, and Paris.
A turning point in people’s relationship to consumption occurred in 1882 when the microbiology pioneer Robert Koch showed that the rod-shaped bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis was behind the scourge. It was the first time that a particular microbe was linked to a disease.