Tuberculosis has been present in humans since antiquity. Origins to disease are the first domestication of the cattle’s (which were also responsible for viral poxes in humans).

The ancient (4000BC) skeletal remains of the prehistoric humans showed TB strains. Egyptian mummies (from3000 – 2400BC) showed tubercular decay. In India too there were references made to TB back around 2000BC and indications of lung scaring identical to that of modern day TB sufferer in preserved bodies (such as mummies). These incidences do indicate that the origin was way back. The instances of TB during the Industrial Revolution can be linked as such.

Tuberculosis was more commonly thought of as vampirism. Actually the incidents which were happening were linked to evil spirit. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that the cause of this was the original victim draining the life from the other family members. To cure this, people would dig up the body of what they thought was the vampire, open the chest and burn the heart, sometimes with the rest of the body. Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered to be vampire traits. People with TB often had symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin and coughing blood (which people often thought needed to be replenished, so they figured the only way for the afflicted to get blood back was by sucking blood). This may be how much of the common mythology of the vampire originated.

Due to the variations in its symptoms, TB was not identified as a single disease until the 1820s and was not named 'tuberculosis' until 1839 by J. L. Schönlein. During the years 1838-1845, Dr. John Croghan, the owner of Mammoth Cave , brought a number of tuberculosis sufferers into the cave in the hope of curing the disease with the constant temperature and purity of the cave air. This led to the first TB sanatorium opened in 1859 in Poland , with another opening in the United States in 1885.

The bacillus-causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was identified and described on March 24, 1882 by Robert Koch. He received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1905 for this discovery. Koch did not believe that bovine (cattle) and human tuberculosis were similar, which held back the recognition of infected milk as a source of infection. Later, this source was eliminated by the pasteurization process. Koch announced a glycerine extract of the tubercle bacilli as a "remedy" for tuberculosis in 1890, calling it 'tuberculin'. It was not effective, but was later adapted by von Pirquet in a test for pre-symptomatic tuberculosis.