ABSTRACT
The development of effective drug treatment for tuberculosis (TB) was a major turning point in the history of the disease and in the progress of biomedicine. Although treatment of active tuberculosis alone has not ultimately proved to be the solution to public health control of the disease, its impact on the lives of individual sufferers has been dramatic. Historical data from major sanatoria in the pre-war era suggest that survival for cases of ‘open’ tuberculosis was only 30% 10 years after admission and that the impact of the predominantly surgical interventions introduced until that time was limited [1]. By contrast, with the introduction of truly effective chemotherapeutic agents and their scientific evaluation in the first randomised controlled trials, the way was opened to a reliable cure for the majority of patients with case-fatality rates rapidly falling to below 10% [2].
