Pulmonary tuberculosis, or consumption, has been a companion of humanity throughout its history. Until the 20th century, consumption meant a death sentence, sparing neither the poor nor the rich, the obscure or the famous. But the attitude towards this disease in society was constantly changing. Ulrike Moser's book shows the tragic stages of these changes: consumption from a “sublime” disease that affects geniuses and angel-like girls turns into a source of profit for mountain resorts, and then into an insidious ulcer of the urban lower classes. In the Third Reich, Nazi tenets of degeneration and racial purity deprived tuberculosis patients of all hope: they were killed en masse or subjected to cruel medical experiments. Despite the discovery of antibiotics, tuberculosis remains one of the most common causes of death today - and it is useful to remember this even against the backdrop of more “current” epidemics. Ulrike Moser is a German historian, contributor to the publications Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Woche.