tuberculosis

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   infection transmitted by inhalation or ingestion of tubercle bacilli and manifested in fever and small lesions, usually in the lungs but in various other parts of the body in acute stages

   Tuberculosis is much more preventable in the modern era.

2. 2
   noun

   An infectious disease of humans and animals caused by a species of mycobacterium, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis, mainly infecting the lungs where it causes tubercles characterized by the expectoration of mucus and sputum, fever, weight loss, and chest pain, and transmitted through inhalation or ingestion of bacteria.

   With smallpox gone, tuberculosis is today the deadliest infectious disease on the planet.

Etymology

To international scientific vocabulary from New Latin tūberculōsis, from Latin tūberculum (diminutive of tūber (“lump”)) + Latin -ōsis (“diseased condition”); by surface analysis, tubercul(um) + -osis; named for the encapsulated colonies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis within the lungs in pulmonary tuberculosis, which can look like small tubers (tubercles) on gross pathology. The disease has existed throughout human experience and had other names for millennia before scientific medicine renamed it with a New Latin term in the mid-19th century (1840s); in English it was called consumption because…