How do you get tuberculosis? Couldn’t he have given it to his patients?
When somebody who has TB is contagious, the virus is passed when the sufferer coughs and the virus is transferred through the air. “Doc” Holliday may have contracted the TB virus from one of his dental patients (who coughed near Holliday while he performed dental work.) Of course, Holliday probably passed on the TB virus to a variety of others. Back then, very little was known about viruses and how TB spread.