Part 2 of my review of John Green's "Everything is
Tuberculosis: The
History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection." Read Part 1 here.
There was a rush in the early part of the 20th century
to isolate humans with TB, an incredibly virulent bacterium. Call it the TB
Sanatorium Craze. Colorado jumped on the bandwagon early. So did New
Mexico, Arizona, and California.
While I am a Colorado native, I spent 33 years living and
working north of the border in Wyoming. The Wyoming State Legislature approved
a TB hospital in Basin and it opened in 1927 . This probably was due to the
Legislature’s tendency to parcel out important government functions: Cheyenne
gets the capitol, Laramie gets the university, Basin gets the patients of a
worldwide plague. It was only fair. As the years progressed, TB patients sought
out famous hot springs in Saratoga and Thermopolis. The steam, heat, and
sunlight were viewed as crucial TB treatments.
The Wyoming Legislature discussed a TB sanatorium as far
back as 1909. During that same time, the National Tuberculosis Association
sponsored a well-attended “Tuberculosis Exhibit” in Cheyenne and
Laramie. The NTA traces its roots to 1904 when concerned citizens formed
the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. This was
their advice during the Wyoming tour, as outlined in the 1910 edition of The
Journal of the Outdoor Life from the University of Michigan:
“The
cure consists of plenty of good, simple food, constant fresh air during the
night as well as during the day, constant rest in the fresh air until there is
no fever , and then carefully and gradually increased short walks, proper care
and washing of your body, and proper clothing and, finally, a
determination to get well and to be cheerful in spite of everything, and only
to look on the bright side of things, however hard your circumstances may be.”
Sanatoria offered all of these things with the predictable
results: The Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne shows that in
1910-1912, when most counties in Wyoming had between one and 20 cases of TB per
year. Albany, Park, and Carbon counties were on the low end with one to three
cases per year (Converse County had zero!) and Sheridan, Sweetwater, and
Laramie counties were on the high side with Laramie County showing 18 cases in
1911.
At the beginning of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl
in September 1930, patient census at the Basin Sanatorium in September 1930
showed 15 women and 37 men. When effective TB treatments such as streptomycin
emerged in the 1940s, the heady days of sanatoria came to a close. Old Archives
photos show the building in Basin where patients struggled to breathe. Sad,
isn’t it, that some settlers came West for breathing room but died for lack of
breath?
Why is Green’s book important to us in the 21st century?
The U.S. has a 99-percent TB cure rate and about 10,000 patients yearly
although that’s going up. Green takes pains to tell the story of Americans with
TB and the tough time they had before modern meds. The Rocky Mountain West,
especially, was home to a number of sanatoria for TB patients. The Wyoming
State Archives has documents tracing the origins of the lone state TB
sanitorium in Basin.
Construction began in Basin in 1926 and the Sanitarium was
opened in May of 1927. By 1969 all references to
tuberculosis were removed at the Wyoming Sanatorium due to the significant
decrease in the incidence of tuberculosis in the state. It was replaced by
the Wyoming Retirement Center which
provides nursing care to residents with mental health, dementia and other
medical needs.
Colorado boasted plenty of facilities. Green writes that
some cities in the West were founded by TB. Colorado Springs is one of them.
National Jewish Hospital in Denver had a treatment center for consumptives.
It’s still known as one of the best pulmonary hospitals in the country.
Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora opened in 1918 at the tail end of
World War One and its specialty was treating men with TB and those whose lungs
were damaged by gas attacks.
The U.S. Army sent my unhorsed cavalry officer grandfather
to Fitzsimons as he struggled with a bad case of pneumonia aggravated by
chemical weapons used in the war. My grandmother, an army nurse and veteran of
a M.A.S.H-style unit in France, treated him there. They married in 1922. Their
eldest was my U.S. Army Signals Corps veteran father who in 1950 married a U.S.
Navy-trained nurse and here I am.
Lung ailments have figured heavily in my family. My
brothers, sisters, and I struggled with asthma in our youth. I almost died
after a bad reaction to horses at a Weld County ranch. This pretty much
demolished my dreams of replacing The Lone Ranger.
Movie westerns have featured tubercular characters. In
“Tombstone,” Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday gambles, drinks, shoots people, coughs
and sweats, not necessarily in that order. A gambler calls him a “dirty lunger”
and pays the price. Gunfighter Johnny Ringo calls him a “lunger” and also pays
the price. The message is clear. ”I’m your huckleberry,” Doc says, before or
after shooting someone. Not bad for a lunger or consumptive patient. Doc
succumbed to consumption in 1887 in Glenwood Springs, Colo. He went there in
1886 when told that the hot springs had curative powers. He apparently was
misinformed. Visit his grave at the Doc Holliday Grave and Hiking Trail.
Flatlanders beware: it’s located more than a mile high and it’s all uphill.
Healthy lungs required.
One of our U.S. presidents, sought out the West’s fresh air
and healthy lifestyle in North Dakota. Theodore Roosevelt thrived, returned to
politics, declared Wyoming’s Yellowstone a national park and Devils Tower a
national monument, and the rest is history and myth-making.
North Dakota’s San Haven Sanatorium in the Turtle Mountains
treated TB patients from 1909 until the 1940s. As final plans were made for a
1911 opening, Superintendent of Public Health Dr. J.L. Grassick referred to TB
as “The Great White Plague” because physicians marked TB-infected lungs with
white arrows and healthy ones with black arrows. and assessed the illness as
more a lifestyle choice than a microscopic rod-shaped bacillus with plans of
its own.
“Wherever man builds his habitation, depresses his vitality
by overwork or by debilitating excesses, lowers his powers of life by using
insufficient or improper food, surrounds himself with the expectoration of his
fellows and deprives himself of the blessings of God’s free air, there you will
find it.”
Sanatoriums such as San Haven offered a higher altitude
than the surrounding prairie, plenty of God’s free air, proper food, and all
the available treatments. One of the more gruesome ones was puncturing and
deflating one sick lung to nurture the other. During its time, more than 50
percent of the patients died.
And then came bacteria-battling antibiotics. San Haven
closed. The abandoned building is billed on N.D. tourism sites as a good place
for ghost-hunting. No mention of how the ghosts of The Great White Plague feel
about this.
To John Green’s credit, the book includes blasts at the
healthcare industry (especially – surprise! -- major drugmakers) and global
policymakers. He does this surprisingly quickly in 208 pages (hardcover) and
256 in paperback. I read it on my Kindle. He requires more pages to describe
faulty stars and why those turtles go all the way down, but fiction is one
thing and non-fiction is another.
The story that holds “Everything is Tuberculosis” together
is one 13-year-old’s journey. Green is a fine storyteller and the one he tells
about Henry keeps the reader hanging on to the end.
Postscript: A big thank you to my son Kevin, a writer and
tech guy in Cheyenne, for hands-on research at the Wyoming State Archives. As
always, the Archives staff went out of their way to help a researcher.
