Every era has its disease. And no disease shaped the 19th and early 20th centuries as much as tuberculosis, then known as consumption. Ulrike Moser offers a new perspective on German social history by examining the contemporary political, medical, and cultural responses to the lung disease that claimed thousands of lives. She vividly reconstructs how consumption was initially romanticized as a fateful illness of geniuses, artists, and the bohemian lifestyle, whose individualism began to be appreciated at that time. She brings to life the world of sanatoriums that emerged around it and describes their decline, which coincided with the rise of mass society. Thus, during industrialization, consumption was devalued and became associated with the "dirty proletarians" who needed to be educated towards cleanliness. In light of the looming radical changes on the horizon.