disease in the background contemplation

[burntcopper]

Tuberculosis. Or TB, as we more commonly know it.

Odd thing. In the UK, it's an ever-present thing. Not an 'argh, we have contagion', but everyone knows about it. Unless you're an immigrant, everyone - and I mean *everyone* has the inoculation scar on their arm they got at 15, which was bloody painful and for most people, puss-ridden until it healed. We learn maybe a tiny bit about it in school as one of the diseases of history, but that's about it. The most we really know about it is that it's a disease to be - not wanted. Like measles, but more severe, and everyone can find their TB / BCG scar in two seconds.

I know in America you don't get inoculated, so how is it treated/viewed there?

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

One of our students had TB a few years ago - she became translucent skinned, delicately rosy-cheeked and rather delicate looking (and according to my mother, who remembers kids and adults in her street who died of TB, becoming porcelain-doll-like in appearance is a usual symptom). Anyway, this girl got better, yay! (And apparently every native Dubliner over the age of sixty or so has TB scars on their lungs, doctors say cheerily).