Doc Holliday was identified as having tuberculosis.
Doc Holliday . He set up practice in Atlanta , Georgia , but he was soon diagnosed with tuberculosis , the same disease that had claimed his mother when he was 15 , having acquired it while tending to her needs while she was still in the contagious phase of the illness . Holliday spent the few remaining years of his life in Colorado , and died of tuberculosis in his bed at the Glenwood Springs Hotel at age 36 .