A “lunger” in Tombstone is not a kind of tombstone at all, but an Old West slur for someone suffering from tuberculosis (a lung disease).

What “lunger” means

  • In 19th‑century American West slang, lunger referred to a person with tuberculosis, often called “consumption” at the time.
  • The term comes from the idea of diseased or weakened lungs and was usually used in a derogatory, stigmatizing way.

How it’s used in Tombstone

  • In the 1993 film Tombstone , townspeople and enemies sometimes call Doc Holliday “lunger” because he is visibly suffering from advanced tuberculosis.
  • Doc Holliday coughs, struggles to breathe, and is portrayed as terminally ill, so the nickname underlines both his frailty and his reputation as a deadly gunslinger despite his sickness.

So what is a “lunger tombstone”?

  • When people say “lunger tombstone” online, they are usually talking about the movie Tombstone and the insult “lunger,” not about an actual grave marker design.
  • There is no widely recognized cemetery style or headstone type formally called a “lunger tombstone” in historical or monument-industry references; it’s essentially a phrase born from the film and Western slang.

TL;DR:
“Lunger” is an Old West insult for someone with tuberculosis, and in Tombstone it’s used for Doc Holliday because of his disease, not as the name of a special kind of tombstone.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.