Ideology and Etiology: Pulmonary Consumption in the 1830s

While Edward Bliss Emerson led an extraordinary life filled with intellectual opportunities and promise, his protracted death was quite ordinary. He died of “consumption,” a broad rubric that included illnesses now labeled as asthma, lung cancer, and tuberculosis. “Consumption” accounted for one in five of all deaths in the United States at the time.

During the first eight decades of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was a condition of unknown etiology and uncertain diagnosis. In the absence of evidence linking the disease to a specific agent, a number of factors were seen as causing, triggering, or contributing to the malady. These included heredity, individual susceptibility, social situations, and the environment. The variety of explanations for the onset and development of illness gave rise to a number of equally varied interventions. This presentation will examine these disparate therapies, and how Emerson sorted through an array of recommendations to treat his ailment in the Puerto Rico of the early 1830s. The presenter will explain how the resources and sources for assembling the presentation were identified, and how they reflect the lack of medical orthodoxy at the time.