Tuberculosis hospital, early 20th century. Panoramic view of nurses and children exercising outdoors at an open-air tuberculosis hospital in Leasowe near Liverpool, UK. Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is an infection, usually of the lungs, by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It was a widespread cause of death before the use of a vaccine (from 1921) and antibiotics (from 1944). This photograph, by a Richard Brown, dates from the period between 1900 and 1920.