The White Plague

Even in the 1930's, when a man was found to have tuberculosis, he received a notice to quit his job and school children with the disease were ordered to stay home indefinitely.

Rene and Jean Dubois called tuberculosis "a social disease" in order to associate the disease with poverty.

"There will emerge from this synthesis the conclusion that tuberculosis is not, as Dickens believed, a disease the "medicine never cured, wealth never warded off". It is the consequence of gross defects in social organization, and of errors in individual behavior. Man can eradicate it without vaccines and without drugs by integrating biological wisdom into social technology, into the management of everyday life."

Rene and Jean Dubois, 1952
"The White Plague"