Tuberculosis: A silent pandemic Authors Pere-Joan Cardona i Iglesias DOI: 10.2436/20.1501.02.233 Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, sanatorium, artificial pneumothorax, Jaume Ferran, Ravetllat-Pla, BCG. Abstract Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a bacterium that has sacrificed its growth rate to wrap itself in an external membrane of mycolic acids and this has allowed it to survive protist predation and to establish a balance with macrophages. It specialized in a subclinical human parasitosis until it broke with the Neolithic culture and the exploitation of the majority, weakening their immune system, and reached its zenith in the Industrial Revolution. Tuberculosis, until then masked by other more explosive pandemics, silently emerged, confused as a hereditary disease, with Romanticism – a cultural movement that exalted the physical appearance of the sick – as its backdrop. Subsequently, thanks to the research of Robert Koch, tuberculosis was found to be the most devastating infectious disease. To deal with it, sanatorium therapy was consolidated and treatment with tuberculins and pneumothorax began. Likewise, vaccines and serotherapies were designed, and Catalan scientists came to play an important role in this field. With the advent of chemotherapy, it seemed that the pandemic would be controlled in the year 2000, but the difficulty in diagnosis, the AIDS epidemic, globalization and the appearance of resistances dashed the forecast, making tuberculosis a silent and uncontrollable pandemic once again. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Downloads PDF (Català) Issue Vol. 74 (2024) Section Articles License The intellectual property of the articles belongs to the respective authors. At the time of submitting the articles to Treballs de la Societat Catalana de Biologia, authors accept the following terms: — Authors assign to the SCB (a subsidiary of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, public communication (including communication through social networks) and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Treballs de la Societat Catalana de Biologia, in any form and medium, including digital platforms. The Publications Committee reserves the right to accept or refuse submitted articles and the right to make any editorial changes it deems appropriate. If the suggested changes are accepted by authors, they should re-submit the article with such changes. — Authors answer to the SCB for the authorship and originality of submitted articles. In other words, authors assure that submitted articles do not contain fragments of works by other authors or fragments of their own previously published works; that the content of articles is original, and that the copyright of third parties is not infringed upon. Authors accept this responsibility and undertake to hold harmless the SCB for any loss or damage resulting from non-compliance with this obligation. Furthermore, they should include a statement in articles submitted to the journal regarding their responsibility for the content of the articles. — Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles, and they should moreover ensure that images, videos, etc., have been created with the consent of the individuals appearing in them, and that material belonging to third parties is clearly identified and acknowledged as such within the text. Likewise, authors should provide the respective consents and authorisations to the SCB when submitting articles. — The SCB is exempt from any liability arising from the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors. In all cases, it undertakes to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies, if necessary. — Unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, the contents published in the journal are subject to an Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Spain (by-nc-nd) license from Creative Commons, the full text of which may be consulted at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Therefore, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate articles as long as their authorship and publishing entity are acknowledged, and no commercial use is made of them nor derivative work produced from them. — The journal is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of published articles.
