Why was tuberculosis called the 'Great White Plague'?
his question should really be the other way round: a disease called the ‘Great White Plague’ was known and feared several decades before ‘tuberculosis’ became widely used in the mid-19th century. Named after the small lumps or tubercles it created in the lungs, tuberculosis had been afflicting human beings for many thousands of years, but its confusing array of symptoms precluded the identification of a single cause.
