Swiss surroundings inspired me to pick up The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann this year. I’ve become fascinated by the culture of sanatoriums in this part of the world.
And I was genuinely surprised to learn that the word consumption was once the medical name for tuberculosis until the early 20th century.
The word consumption comes from the Latin consumere — to use up, wear out, or destroy.
What a wild evolution for a single word: from naming a disease that consumes the body from within to describing us as the ones consuming the world’s energy.
Do we need to build new sanatoriums—not for tuberculosis this time, but for consumers?
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