What is "consumptives"

Usage examples of "consumptives".

It was by daring to order fresh air for small-pox patients, and riding on horseback for consumptives, in place of the smothering system, and the noxious and often loathsome rubbish of the established schools.

There be some who do give these tabid or consumptives a certain posset made with lime-water and anise and liquorice and raisins of the sun, and there be other some who do give the juice of craw-fishes boiled in barley-water with chickenbroth, but these be toys, as I do think, and ye shall find as good virtue, nay better, in this syrup of the simple called Maidenhair.

He injected the sick tissue from the wasted bodies of consumptives who had died, into hundreds of guinea-pigs, into rabbits and three dogs, thirteen scratching cats, ten flopping chickens and twelve pigeons.