Science Focus
original post »How can you not cry at the end of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, when the courtesan Satine passes away in her lover Christian's arms after he throws money at her and calls her a whore in front of a packed theater only to then learn that she really does love him and had to break up with him to save his life from the wealthy but evil Duke who had sworn to kill him? Yes, it's been foreshadowed by the fact that she had been coughing up blood for the past two hours, but still—it's tragic.
Satine died of consumption—tuberculosis—which was the big microbial menace of the mid-to-late nineteenth century Western world. Why that particular bug, at that particular time and place?
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, can remain latent inside of an infected person for decades. When humans lived in small, isolated bands—as they did until the Neolithic Revolution made agriculture widespread—this was a very effective means of transmission for the bacteria. Once it infected everyone in the group, it had no new victims; so it just hung out, dormant, in the same group of people until those people reproduced. Voila—new victims!
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