The White Plague Returns · Episode 3 of 12 · 15 min
The Cure of Rest
Before antibiotics, the cure for tuberculosis was to lie still on a cold porch for months. A dying New York doctor in the Adirondacks turned a German idea into an American movement, funded partly by the penny Christmas seal. The episode covers collapsed lungs, New York's detention of patients, who got a bed and who did not, and the Indian boarding schools, then asks whether a cure that cured little was worth it.
Who's who
- Edward Livingston Trudeau+1 more episodePhysician with TB who founded the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium
- Hermann BrehmerGerman physician who opened an early lung sanatorium at Görbersdorf
- Peter DettweilerSanatorium founder who made rest the center of the regimen
- Carlo ForlaniniItalian physician who made artificial pneumothorax a treatment
- Hermann Biggs+1 more episodeNew York health official who secured compulsory TB reporting
- Emily Bissell+1 more episodeOrganized the first American Christmas Seal sale in 1907
- Einar HolbøllDanish postal worker behind the Christmas seal idea
- Lewis MeriamLead author of the 1928 report criticizing Indian Service health work
Where it happens
- Saranac Lake, New York+2 more episodesSite of Trudeau's Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium
- Görbersdorf, SilesiaSite of Brehmer's early lung institution
- Wilmington, Delaware+2 more episodesWhere the first American Christmas Seal was sold
- Burkeville, VirginiaSite of Piedmont Sanatorium for African American patients
- New York City+13 more episodesRegistered, removed and detained tuberculosis patients
Timeline
- February 1, 1885Little Red, the first cottage at Saranac Lake, is occupied
- 1897New York requires every physician to report every case within twenty-four hours
- May 1902New York begins removing and holding patients without their consent
- December 7, 1907Emily Bissell sells the first American Christmas Seal
- April 1918Piedmont Sanatorium opens in Virginia for African American patients
- 1954The Trudeau Sanatorium closes
Still debated
No controlled trial ever tested the rest cure, so its benefit to individual patients is uncertain. Historians also debate whether isolating patients cut transmission, since the bed counts suggest any effect was partial. Federal counts of boarding-school deaths are a floor, with causes not established for each.
