Even during the exhumation of Mercy and her sister and mother, tuberculosis was being effectively treated. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as many as one out of three people died from the disease, especially in remote rural areas where, as Dr. Bowditch concluded, the climate was damp and ripe for the spread of the horrible infection. This, however, would change with the twentieth-century discoveries that medical science developed in regard to the treatment of tuberculosis.
By 1895, Wilhelm Konrad Von Roentgen had discovered a radiation treatment that could monitor a patient’s progress, either positive or negative. This was another major step in the fight against the dreaded disease. The National Tuberculosis Association was formed in 1904 to promote more awareness, encourage prevention and work toward a cure for TB. The society later changed its name to the American Lung Association. The first somewhat successful vaccine for TB was the BCG vaccine (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) named after Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin, who worked on the vaccine. It was first used on humans in 1921.
Sanatoriums and special hospitals were set up to isolate TB patients. These places, despite the ongoing advances in the treatment of TB, still thrived, and the death rate in some cases was devastating. In Burrillville, Rhode Island, there sits the remains of a small village in the middle of the woods that was erected for the purpose of isolating TB patients from the populace. They could live normal lives among themselves and be treated, yet they were far enough from the main population so as to not infect others.
Around World War II, chemotherapy was discovered and became a major victory in the battle against tuberculosis. In 1914, Selman Waksman began research on an antibiotic for tuberculosis. His unending pursuit finally paid off in 1943, when he found that the antibiotic streptomycin not only stopped the spread of the mycobacterium tuberculosis but also caused the existing bacteria to recede from the patient. The remedy was first administered on November 20, 1944, with great success.
Other antibiotics and treatments emerged in seemingly rapid succession. By 1952, isoniazid was on the market as an oral antibiotic for TB. In the 1970s, rifampin was a new drug that made the recovery period of TB patients shorter. These medical wonders drastically reduced the number of TB patients, until the 1980s, when a drug-resistant strain of TB, called multi–drug resistant TB, began to emerge. Although not as widespread as in the past, the disease is still being diagnosed and treated. Most of the serious cases are in developing countries. One must consider that the United States, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was also a developing country.
Today, millions of people are treated for TB successfully, and the medical field continues to make advances that hopefully will someday turn tuberculosis, like the New England vampire, into a legend of the past.