I was following this blog to install python 3.7.3 on my MX-linux 18.1 machine. Step by step procedure is as follows
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall
sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev \
libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev