Taking advantage of online newspaper archives, we built and analyzed an online dataset of tuberculosis deaths to measure, visualize, and narrate the stories of lives lost to consumption. Although his case was not unique in age, length of illness, or even cause of death, Dunbar’s fame as an African American poet and the reporting on his death are unique in their capacity to illustrate consumption’s effect on society at the turn of the 20th century. Tuberculosis was the single greatest cause of death between 18, claiming three to four million estimated lives in the United States, including Dunbar’s. On February 9, 1906, at the age of 33, Paul Laurence Dunbar died at his home in Dayton, Ohio, of consumption (the common name for tuberculosis in this era). Written by Imogen Gerard and Kelsie Root, as part of their internship with the AHRC project, 'Living with Dying: Everyday Cultures of Dying within Family Life in Britain, 1900-50s', summer 2017.Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet. Select ‘View key statistics’ to generate charts displaying the breakdown of who this disease affected. To find out more, visit the Leeds General Cemetery Burial Registers Index. By 1920, the percentage of deaths caused by tuberculosis in Leeds had decreased to 1.56%.Ĭonsumption is one of the top ten most common causes of death recorded in the Leeds General Cemetery burial registers. Other methods of containing tuberculosis included designating funds and hospital beds for sufferers and public health campaigns about the importance of good hygiene. It is possible for this bacteria to infect humans, so the local government in Leeds employed a number of inspectors to keep records on dairy farmers and their cattle in West Yorkshire. Cows can carry another type of bacteria, Mycobacterium bovis. One of these methods involved tight regulation and monitoring of dairy products. As a result, the local government were keen to instigate methods of controlling the spread of the disease. Tuberculosis was particularly prevalent in Leeds: in 1890, 11% of all deaths in the city were caused by tuberculosis. Eventually however, consumption’s reputation as a bohemian disease faded as it became more closely associated with the unsanitary housing conditions of the working poor. This is reflected in the representations of consumption in popular culture, such as the opera La Boheme. In some circles, it developed a reputation for being the ‘artist’s disease’. The image of consumption came to have a profound effect on culture as a whole. However, consumption was extremely widespread and affected people from all backgrounds. Overcrowding, lack of ventilation and damp all made consumption more likely to spread, and thus it was particularly likely to affect people living in the smaller houses and poorer conditions associated with lower incomes. The Leeds General Cemetery burial registers record over 5,500 deaths caused by consumption and a further 500 caused by ‘TB’, ‘tuberculosis’ or ‘phthisis’. A huge number of people suffered with the disease throughout the nineteenth century. HistoryĬonsumption was a leading cause of death and disability in previously healthy adults in Britain in the 1800s. In adults, it is usually caused by the tuberculosis bacterium, with symptoms including swelling of the lymph nodes, fever, weight loss and open wounds on the skin of the neck. Scrofula is an infection of the lymph nodes. ‘Scrofula’, a disease which also appears as a cause of death in the burial registers, is also known ‘Mycobacterial cervical lymphadenitis’. Examples of this in the register include ‘consumption of bowels’ and ‘consumption of the brain’. Tuberculosis infection can also affect organs of the body other than the lungs. It is also possible to have a latent tuberculosis infection, carrying the bacteria but not suffer from active tuberculosis (and thus not be able to transmit the infection to others). The bacteria that cause tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, can be spread through coughing, sneezing and spitting. Eventually, the lungs of the sufferer become so damaged that respiratory failure occurs. It also causes significant weight loss, which is the source of its historical name, consumption. Consumption, today more commonly called ‘tuberculosis’, is a bacterial infection which typically affects the lungs of a sufferer, causing a persistent wet cough, difficulty breathing, fever, fatigue and sweating.
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