[The legend of 150,000 deceased from tuberculosis per year]

This article analyzes the stages by which it was concluded that there were 150,000 deaths from tuberculosis in France at the end of the nineteenth century. The calculations made by Brouardel are broken down and the inappropriate nature of some of his choices is pointed out. In addition to these oddities in calculation, the contemporary social and political factors warrant our attention. The estimation can also be explained by the growing fears regarding demographic and social perils. Did not tuberculosis and the falling birth rate jeopardize all hope of taking revenge on Germany? In fact, the "enemy" had decided to undertake a vast program for the construction of sanatoriums, thus tempting the French public health authorities to use the figures to mobilize the attention of the public and politicians. In the collective imagination, tuberculosis and its 150,000 fatalities replaced the great epidemic of the nineteenth century, cholera, whose most destructive appearance in 1854 killed precisely 150,000 persons. In spite of the more probable estimation from the statistical services (fewer than 100,000 deaths), this figure of 150,000 deaths from tuberculosis was revived in the period between the World Wars and again in the last decade by certain historians, which proves that it became engraved in memory. However, from the turn of the century, and especially between 1918 and 1940, the proponents of these numbers have admitted that they used them to influence opinion. Here we have an excellent example of a dual language: depending on where he was speaking, the same scientist of political authority could simply double the estimations of mortality from tuberculosis.