The hereditary theory for TB dated back to Hippocrates, who noted that “consumptives beget consumptives.” It would prove an exceptionally hard notion to shake, insofar as the disease did spread through families, with the onset between family members often occurring generationally, delayed by years or decades. What’s more, the symptoms of consumption (lassitude, lack of appetite, emaciation) seemed to endorse the notion that a consumptive had inherited an overall physical weakness that culminated in the disease, rather than the other way around.
