Tuberkulose: Kampen mot bekjempelsen

Abstract

Abstract Traditionally, the turning point in the fight against tuberculosis is perceived as Robert Koch’s description of the bacterium in 1882. In Norway, the legislation from 1900 has been interpreted as a breakthrough. However, how was tuberculosis understood by doctors in Kristiania in the latter half of the 19th century? As it appears in Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskaben – the country's most important medical journal – the term was far from unambiguous and precise. During the period 1840-1900, three forms of understanding dominate: tuberculosis as hereditary, something which arose spontaneously from imbalance or as a disease mediated through infection. Throughout the period, tuberculosis was absent in the journal's infectious disease tables. Furthermore, the effective fight against the disease met resistance. Opposition expressed itself through liberal arguments: measures were terrorism and threats to personal freedom. The opposition to fighting tuberculosis was also based on scepticism towards bacteria as pathogens. There are grounds for claiming that “tuberculosis” did not exist in Kristiania – a parallel to Bruno Latour’s pointing out that Pharaoh Ramses could not have had tuberculosis, despite the fact that French doctors recently have detected the disease in his mummy. The Egyptians did not know tuberculosis 3,000 years ago.

Keywords

• Tuberculosis
• public health history
• epidemics
• 19th century history
• health legislation
• medical history