The Excess of Consumption

When we take consumption to an extreme, we take more than we produce and we find ourselves in debt.

Consumption used to be the name for tuberculosis because the illness consumed one's life from within. Flotsam/Shutterstock

The dreaded disease we know as tuberculosis was at one time known as consumption.

A highly contagious illness, consumption got its name from the way it takes a person’s life slowly from within—first with a bloody cough, then fever, pallor, and the long, relentless wasting away.