1908: “Tuberculosis, called the great white plague, is becoming a serious menace to life in Erath County, and many homes have already been made desolate. By following rigid sanitary rules the disease will be prevented; of course, those who now have it will die.” Stephenville Tribune I was told by a Brownwood blacksmith that I interviewed in the 1970s that in the early 1900s, when he lit his forge each morning and waited for the green, high sulphur (Thurber) coal smoke to dissipate, that women with TB would pay him 50 cents a week to crowd around the smoky fire, with quilts over their heads, and breathe all they could stand of the black smoke. The coal smoke treatments probably did nothing for them – but people need to feel that they are doing something when faced with a fatal disease.