The White Plague.

Americans had lived in fear of tuberculosis for nearly three-quarters of a century by the 1950s. Because the disease is deadly and highly infectious, victims were isolated in special hospitals called sanatoriums, where at the beginning of the century, at least, they lived out their last days with other patients. The death rate from tuberculosis in 1950 was only 11 percent of what it was in 1900; still 33,633 people died from the disease that year. By 1955 the number of deaths from tuberculosis had been halved.

Good News.

In 1956 the Annual Report of the National Tuberculosis Association contained good news: deaths from tuberculosis were down to sixteen thousand a year. For the first time in history, tuberculosis had fallen from the list of the top ten diseases rated by the number of deaths they cause. (By the end of the decade the death rate was down...