Last week, as I recovered from Thanksgiving and started thinking about Christmas, I was able to find a bit of time to work on family history. I was mostly consumed with work on children and other descendants of my ancestors William and Milly McCall. During the week I ran into a couple relatives who died of consumption and it got me asking questions about that disease. This post shares some of what I learned. Warning: my eyes normally glaze over when anyone starts speaking medical jargon, so this is written from a historian’s perspective.

What is consumption?

If you are not involved in family history or studying the past, you may not have heard of consumption. But folks in the past definitely knew about it.

And maybe you have heard of tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis (TB) was historically known as consumption. It has been a significant disease throughout human history. Hippocrates called it “phthisis” (Greek for wasting disease) back in ancient Greece.

It was nothing short of an epidemic in North America and Europe during the 1700s and 1800s. By the beginning of the 19th century, tuberculosis had killed one in seven of all people that had ever lived.¹

No one understood what caused the condition. Some thought it was hereditary. Some thought it affected those with weak bodies. People did not understood that it was contagious.

Because tuberculosis was so widespread, it was often romanticized, particularly in literature. A tragic heroine might be described as “wasting away,” too delicate for the harsh realities of life. A modern example is the character Satine, played by Nicole Kidman in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge, who suffers from tuberculosis. While her death is portrayed as tragic and romantic, the reality of end-stage pulmonary tuberculosis is far from glamorous. Those infected endured severe weight loss, fever, night sweats, relentless coughing, and even coughing up blood.

There are many varieties of tuberculosis.² Pulmonary tuberculosis is the most common. It affects the lungs. We know now that it spreads through airborne droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks.

It was not until 1882 that a German physician named Robert Koch identified that mycobacterium tuberculosis was the bacterium responsible for the disease. His discovery marked the beginning of scientific approaches to understanding and combatting the disease.^{3 4}

After Koch’s discovery, the medical community began to understand that it was not genetic, but that it was very contagious. They also figured out that it was somewhat preventable through good hygiene.

Public health campaigns were launched to educate the public on how to prevent and treat the disease.

How did it affect our family?

Though, I have almost 79,000 people in my family tree database, I only have the cause of death for less than 1.5% of those people. Records were not regularly kept until modern times, so where a person died and when they died largely determines how much I know about their death.

Currently, I have 47 individuals in my tree who I know died from TB based on death records and/or obituaries.

The consumption-related causes of death that I found were listed as:

Our youngest TB victim was 17-month old Charles Woodrow Coffey, a McCall descendant and 4th cousin 1x removed of Tom Estes. The oldest was 80-year old Johannes Torkjelson Øvstedal, a great-uncle of Margaret Olga Aldahl Christianson. Charles was an outlier; the next youngest person was 18. The median age of death was 44 years.

In our small sample of family members, the deaths occurred between 1854 and 1957.

A statistician (and I happen to be related to a couple) would likely dismiss my findings as statistically insignificant. The sample size is very small and the availability of death records improves considerably in later years compared to the 1850s. I am sharing this data to show that the disease was affecting our relatives for at least a century – and more likely back to ancient times.

While these 47 consumption victims died in California, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, most died in Minnesota, Missouri, and North Carolina. These states have relatively well-preserved death records, and they are also the regions where I’ve focused much of my recent family research.

Probably more interesting for our purposes here will be to highlight a few of the people on this tragic list.

John Estes

One of my direct ancestors died of consumption. John Estes was born about 1800 in Kentucky, and died around 12 May 1859 in Callaway County, Missouri. While his death date wasn’t recorded, the last item on his doctor bill was from 11 May 1859 and the bill for his coffin was dated 13 May 1859. The 12th seems a likely death date. He was about 59-years-old at the time of his death, but had been sick for many years. Bills from the doctor that were preserved in his probate file date back to March 1856, so we know he suffered for at least three years. I wrote a little about him in a post on this website and wrote a lot about him in my Estes book. One medication that he was prescribed indicates that he had the common pulmonary tuberculosis – bottle after bottle of expectorant.

At the time of John Estes’ death, the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis was still decades away. The medications prescribed to John were most likely to keep him comfortable rather than to try to cure him.

Randi Christiansdtr Rukke

Randi Christiansdtr Rukke was born in Rock County, Wisconsin, on 27 Feb 1849, to Ragnild Bjornsdtr Skolt and Christian Oleson Rukke. She was a great-aunt to Bennett Nils Christianson and also to Margaret Olga Aldahl, though she was gone before either of them was born.

When she was a child, Randi moved with her parents to Mower County, Minnesota. You can read a lot more about the family in my Christianson book.

Called Rose or Rosy, she married and had a son. Her husband passed away in 1871 and she remarried towards the end of 1873. She had three more children.

Then, tuberculosis!

There were no antibiotics or effective medical treatments available yet to treat her consumption. There were no sanitoriums yet in Minnesota⁵, but she may have been encouraged to gets lots of fresh air, to eat nutritious food like milk, eggs, and fresh produce, and/or maybe even encouraged to use cod liver oil. These treatments could not save her.

Randi died of consumption on 19 Jan 1890 in Mower County, Minnesota, at the age of 40.⁶ She left behind her second husband and four children aged nine to 18. Adding more tragedy to the story of this family, the second husband, Hans Reierson Rukke, died in 1911 after drinking carbolic acid with suicidal intent.⁷

Charles A. Cornell

Charles A. Cornell was born on 10 Dec 1867 in Clipper Mills, Butte, California, as the first child of Peter Morris Cornell and Margaret E. Kelley. His older half-sister was Jane Elizabeth Cornell Miller.

Charles died on 22 Apr 1901 in Oakland, Alameda, California, at age 33. His cause of death was Pulmonary tuberculosis.

Mary Mildred McCall

Mary Mildred McCall was a daughter of Elizabeth A. Linville and Samual Christopher McCall. Mary Mildred is one of the characters that will be featured in the McCall book that I am currently writing. Family tradition says that she was not quite right in the head. She never married yet had two daughters.

In the 1910 Federal Census, Mary was found listed as an inmate in the Callaway County Almshouse.⁸ A year later, she died at the Fulton Missouri State Hospital, at age 43. The cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis.⁹

Fulton State Hospital was an asylum for the insane. When the hospital first opened in 1851, decades before Mary Mildred’s time there, one of the causes of mental illness noted on admission papers was tuberculosis. By the time she was a patient, TB and mental illness were both better understood though therapies for mental illness were still evolving. It would be decades after Mary Mildred’s death that they began using now controversial electrotherapy and prefrontal lobotomies to treat mental illness so the methods of her time were probably pretty crude.¹⁰ If family stories are correct, Mary Mildred was probably in the hospital because of her mental deficiencies. Maybe she even contracted tuberculosis in the hospital. But, at the time, people were institutionalized for having TB.

She probably was quarantined in the state hospital to keep her isolated from others to prevent spread of the disease. She may not have been allowed visitors. Maybe she was not even allowed to see her daughters, Bessie and Alta, who were teenagers then being raised by their grandfather, Sam.

Henry Radant

Heinrich E. H. Radant, was the husband of one of Frederick Aschbrenner‘s first cousins.

Called Henry, he was born on 02 Mar 1875 in Stettin, Marathon, Wisconsin. After his first wife died, he married Albertine Louise Henrietta Aschbrenner, daughter of Gustav Edward Aschbrenner and Johanne Caroline Wilhelmine Kluender, on 04 Oct 1906 in Marathon, Wisconsin. He had a son with his first wife and then a son and daughter with Albertine. You can read more about the family in my book The Aschbrenner Family.

Henry died 27 Mar 1912 in Wausau, Marathon, Wisconsin. He left a wife and the three children who were from two to 14. The newspaper reported that his cause of death was consumption (“white plague”).¹¹

John Marion Farris

John Marion Farris was a 2nd cousin 1x removed of Tom Estes. They shared Elizabeth Riley and Moses Estes as ancestors. He was also a 2nd cousin to another John Farris who was featured here back in 2017 (Farris Will Not Swing for A While).

This John was born in 1877 and, as an adult, worked as a lead miner and mine foreman in Joplin, Jasper, Missouri. Joplin was the heart of the Tri-State Mining District, one of the largest lead and zinc mining areas in the world. The primary minerals being mined in Joplin during this time were lead and zinc.¹²

From the 1940s onward, with the discovery of antibiotics like streptomycin, TB could usually be cured. But not always.

John contracted silico-tuberculosis. That was listed as his cause of death when he died in Joplin on 09 Feb 1957, at age 79.¹³

Silico-tuberculosis is common among miners and is caused by inhaling particles of free silica – the dust that results from mining work. It is still considered a major health issue in some parts of the world.¹⁴

Why don’t we hear about it now?

We do not hear much about tuberculosis in our modern times.

That is a good thing.

I have memories of being tested for TB back in elementary school. The school nurse would come around and poke everyone in the forearm with a multi-pronged needle. A few days later the nurse would return to look at all the poked arms. I’m not sure I knew what they were looking for, but I remember being worried that they would single me out as having something wrong with my arm poke.

In the early 20th century, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death in the U.S. School-aged children were a focus of public health campaigns since they were in close contact with others and could spread the disease to their families and communities.

The Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) was developed. A small amount of purified protein derivative tuberculin was injected just under the skin of the forearm using a tiny needle or a multi-pronged device. After 48-72 hours the test site was examined for a raised, red bump, indicating possible TB infection. The size of the reaction determined whether it was positive.

Testing programs began in the early 1900s but expanded significantly after WWII due to heightened public health awareness of effective treatment. In the 1950s through the 1970s, widespread TB testing in schools was routine in many parts of the U.S. But by the 1970s and 1980s, TB incidence in the U.S. had dropped significantly due to improved living conditions and nutrition, effective antibiotics for treatment, and public health measures like contract tracing and targeted testing. Routine school-based testing was mostly phased out by the 1980s and 1990s.

The routine program to vaccine U.S. schoolchildren against tuberculosis using the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine ended in the early 2000s. Because there is a low risk of infection, it is no longer recommended.

Testing for tuberculosis is still performed on selected higher risk populations. For example, anyone known to have been exposed to TB, healthcare workers,¹⁵ and new immigrants.

Tuberculosis is not a common discussion topic anymore because it is now very uncommon in the U.S. But drug-resistant tuberculosis is a modern form of TB caused by bacteria resistant to standard antibiotics and their are parts of the world where the disease is still an issue, so it does still exist.

Learning about tuberculosis and its impact on my family tree has deepened my appreciation for the advances in modern medicine. It’s also a poignant reminder of how health crises, past and present, shape our families and their stories. As I continue exploring my ancestors’ lives, I’m grateful for the chance to honor their struggles—and share their stories with future generations.

Let’s hope we never have to talk about consumption as a widespread issue again!

Footnotes

1. “The Forgotten Plague: TB in America: 1895-1954,” American Experience (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/plague-gallery/ : accessed 08 Dec 2024) ↩︎
2. “Clinical Overview of Tuberculosis Disease,” https://www.cdc.gov/tb/hcp/clinical-overview/tuberculosis-disease.html : accessed 09 Dec 2024. ↩︎
3. Thomas M. Daniel, “The history of tuberculosis,” Science Direct (Volume 100, Issue 11, November 2006, pp. 1862-70. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095461110600401X#:~:text=23%2C%2024%20Hippocrates%20clearly%20recognized,young%20adults%20for%20active%20tuberculosis. : accessed 07 Dec 2024. ↩︎
4. “Robert Kock,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch : accessed 09 Dec 2024. ↩︎
5. “State Institutions: Tuberculosis Hospitals,” Gale Family Library https://libguides.mnhs.org/institutions/th : 09 Dec 2024. ↩︎
6. Rosy Rearson (Randi Christiansdtr Rukke); 19 Jan 1890;” Minnesota, County Deaths, 1850-2001,” Mower, Death register, 1900-1944, vol A, image 86; https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9D2-PS7M-K?i=85&wc=36TJ-SP6%3A1583727002%2C1583727202%3Fcc%3D2185953&cc=2185953 : accessed 09 March 2016. Family Search – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, discussion list (familysearch.org).  ↩︎
7. 1911. “Closes Life’s Journey: Aged Man Wearies of Life and Ends it with Acid, 06 Jul: 04. https://www.newspapers.com/image/15110530: Accessed 9 March 2016. The Austin Daily Herald, Austin, Minnesota. ↩︎
8. 1910 Federal Census, Census Place: Saint Aubert, Callaway, Missouri; Roll: T624_774; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 0039; FHL microfilm: 1374787. ↩︎
9. Missouri, Death Certificates, Mary McCall; https://www.sos.mo.gov/images/archives/deathcerts/1911/1911_00013589.PDF : accessed 15 Jan 2018; Missouri Digital Heritage, http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/. ↩︎
10. “History – Fulton State Hospital Building Project,” Missouri Department of Mental Health,” https://dmh.mo.gov/fulton-state-hospital/history : accessed 08 Dec 2024. ↩︎
11. 1912. “Died of Consumption: Henry Radant Passed Away Last Evening After Long Suffering With White Plague,” 28 Mar: 05. https://www.newspapers.com/image/271599569/ : accessed 02 Jan 2021, Wausau Daily Record-Herald, Wausau, Wisconsin (www.newspapers.com). ↩︎
12. “Mining History 17,” Missouri Digital Heritage (https://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/jplnpstcrds/id/803/ : accessed 08 Dec 2024).  ↩︎
13. Missouri, Death Certificates, John Marion Farris ( https://www.sos.mo.gov/images/archives/deathcerts/1957/1957_00005212.PDF : accessed 22 May 2018); Missouri Digital Heritage, http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/. ↩︎
14. Massimiliano Lanzafame and Sandro Vento, “Mini-review: Silico-tuberculosis,” National Library of Medicine (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7868994/ : accessed 08 Dec 2024). ↩︎
15. “Mayo Clinic Careers,” https://jobs.mayoclinic.org/?utm_source=Google(SEM)&utm_medium=Search&utm_campaign=D799720_Multi_Brand&utm_medium=jobboard&utm_source=srm_google_sem&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAx9q6BhCDARIsACwUxu5J9ZNqZ4XS8MaR9LB1JkP-x6VTAs_wSCmHB1Ta29q9DGu1P445gLYaApDUEALw_wcB : accessed 09 Dec 2024. ↩︎