Choosing the Meaning of Disease

From the excellent and illuminating Everything is Tuberculosis, written by YA author (e.g. The Fault in Our Stars) John Green:

I want to pause here to note a defining feature of humans, which is that we like to know why things happen, especially when really bad things happen. And if a reason is not immediately apparent, we will find one.

and

We all engage in the punitive act of giving a disease a meaning.

The ability to tell a convincing story is very different from the ability to be right. The narratives about TB that Green describes are both historically fascinating and unfortunately still very relevant today.