[20] Although Richard Morton established the pulmonary form associated with tubercles as a pathology in 1689,[21][22] due to the variety of its symptoms, TB was not identified as a single disease until the 1820s.

Campaigns started to stop people from spitting in public places, and the infected poor were "encouraged" to enter sanatoria that resembled prisons.

The BCG vaccine was first used on humans in 1921 in France,[40] but achieved widespread acceptance in the US, Great Britain, and Germany only after World War II.

Prior to the introduction of this medication, the only treatment was surgical intervention, including the "pneumothorax technique", which involved collapsing an infected lung to "rest" it and to allow tuberculous lesions to heal.

[14] Occasionally, people may cough up blood in small amounts, and in very rare cases, the infection may erode into the pulmonary artery or a Rasmussen aneurysm, resulting in massive bleeding.

[64][65] M. bovis was once a common cause of tuberculosis, but the introduction of pasteurized milk has almost eliminated this as a public health problem in developed countries.

[70]When people with active pulmonary TB cough, sneeze, speak, sing, or spit, they expel infectious aerosol droplets 0.5 to 5.0 μm in diameter.

[110] The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has recommended screening people who are at high risk for latent tuberculosis with either tuberculin skin tests or interferon-gamma release assays.

[112] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped recommending yearly testing of health care workers without known exposure in 2019.

[113] Tuberculosis prevention and control efforts rely primarily on the vaccination of infants and the detection and appropriate treatment of active cases.

[135] Making HAART therapy available to HIV-positive individuals significantly reduces the risk of progression to an active TB infection by up to 90% and can mitigate the spread through this population.

Effective TB treatment is difficult, due to the unusual structure and chemical composition of the mycobacterial cell wall, which hinders the entry of drugs and makes many antibiotics ineffective.

[138] Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) at a dose of 100 mg per day has been shown to improve clinical signs and symptoms, reduce cavitary lesions, lower inflammatory markers, and increase the rate of sputum-negative conversion in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.

A person with fully susceptible MTB may develop secondary (acquired) resistance during therapy because of inadequate treatment, not taking the prescribed regimen appropriately (lack of compliance), or using low-quality medication.

[159] For those with known rifampicin or MDR-TB, molecular tests such as the Genotype MTBDRsl Assay (performed on culture isolates or smear positive specimens) may be useful to detect second-line anti-tubercular drug resistance.

[14] Those at high risk thus include: people who inject illicit drugs, inhabitants and employees of locales where vulnerable people gather (e.g., prisons and homeless shelters), medically underprivileged and resource-poor communities, high-risk ethnic minorities, children in close contact with high-risk category patients, and health-care providers serving these patients.

[180] However, in countries where incidence rates have declined dramatically (such as the United States), tuberculosis is mainly a disease of the elderly and immunocompromised (risk factors are listed above).

Those with low SES are more likely to be affected by risk factors for developing TB (e.g., malnutrition, indoor air pollution, HIV co-infection, etc.

[13] Hopes of totally controlling the disease have been dramatically dampened because of many factors, including the difficulty of developing an effective vaccine, the expensive and time-consuming diagnostic process, the necessity of many months of treatment, the increase in HIV-associated tuberculosis, and the emergence of drug-resistant cases in the 1980s.

[184] In 2010, rates per 100,000 people in different areas of the world were: globally 178, Africa 332, the Americas 36, Eastern Mediterranean 173, Europe 63, Southeast Asia 278, and Western Pacific 139.

Evidence indicates that the tuberculosis national survey does not represent the number of cases that are diagnosed and recorded by private clinics and hospitals in India.

[202][206] Major artistic figures such as the poets John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Edgar Allan Poe, the composer Frédéric Chopin,[207] the playwright Anton Chekhov, the novelists Franz Kafka, Katherine Mansfield,[208] Charlotte Brontë, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, W. Somerset Maugham,[209] George Orwell,[210] and Robert Louis Stevenson, and the artists Alice Neel,[211] Jean-Antoine Watteau, Elizabeth Siddal, Marie Bashkirtseff, Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley and Amedeo Modigliani either had the disease or were surrounded by people who did.

Physical mechanisms proposed for this effect included the slight fever and toxaemia that it caused, allegedly helping them to see life more clearly and to act decisively.

[212][213][214] Tuberculosis formed an often-reused theme in literature, as in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, set in a sanatorium;[215] in music, as in Van Morrison's song "T.B.

[220] The World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the U.S. government are subsidizing a fast-acting diagnostic tuberculosis test for use in low- and middle-income countries as of 2012.

[225] India had the highest total number of TB cases worldwide in 2010, in part due to poor disease management within the private and public health care sector.

"[159] Slow progress has led to frustration, expressed by the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – Mark Dybul: "we have the tools to end TB as a pandemic and public health threat on the planet, but we are not doing it.

"[159] Several international organizations are pushing for more transparency in treatment, and more countries are implementing mandatory reporting of cases to the government as of 2014, although adherence is often variable.

[237] To encourage further discovery, researchers and policymakers are promoting new economic models of vaccine development as of 2006, including prizes, tax incentives, and advance market commitments.

[256] An effort to eradicate bovine tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium bovis from the cattle and deer herds of New Zealand has been relatively successful.