section_path: Society and culture/Names
section_name: Names
paragraph_text: Names
  
  Tuberculosis has been known by many names from the technical to the familiar. Phthisis (φθίσις) is the Greek word for consumption, an old term for pulmonary tuberculosis; around 460 BCE, Hippocrates described phthisis as a disease of dry seasons. The abbreviation TB is short for tubercle bacillus. Consumption was the most common nineteenth century English word for the disease, and was also in use well into the twentieth century. The Latin root con meaning 'completely' is linked to sumere meaning 'to take up from under'. In The Life and Death of Mr Badman by John Bunyan, the author calls consumption "the captain of all these men of death." "Great white plague" has also been used.