This isn’t the first time that Oregon has experienced a pandemic. At the turn of the twentieth century, one in seven people in the United States and Europe died from tuberculosis.

TB is highly contagious and through the centuries has been known as consumption, wasting disease, and the white plague.

In 1910, Oregon was the first Western state to build a public tuberculosis hospital to isolate infected patients. Treatments included fresh air and rest. There wasn’t much else that could be done until an antibiotic treatment as developed in the 1950s.

Today, TB remains the world’s leading infectious disease. Near two billion people are infected across the globe, with over ten million new cases each year.

Oregon Experience’s “White Plague," originally aired in 2010, examines its long and deadly impact on the state.

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