A century-and-a-half ago tuberculosis (TB) was such a fact of daily life that the tragic romance of a young woman dying from the disease was immortalized in Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera La Traviata.
No one is writing operas, or their modern equivalent, movies or television shows about TB these days, and most people probably never give it a second thought — even though it is a disease that has afflicted the likes of celebrities like Nelson Mandela, Ringo Star, Sir Tom Jones and Tina Turner.