Edward Livingston Trudeau moved to the Adirondacks planning to die peacefully in the Mountains within a few months. He like many other Americans in the 1870s was suffering from a then incurable disease, tuberculosis.Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease transmitted through air droplet particles. However, unlike the cold or flu it is not easily caught. People, unless immunocompromised, must spend significant time with an infected individual to catch the disease. It is typically spread through family members. Symptoms include a cough, often with mucus or blood, chills, fatigue, fever, loss of weight, and loss of appetite.
After Trudeau watched his brother waste away in the city he sought out a different location to live out his numbered days. He enjoyed the fresh air and picturesque mountains of the Adirondacks. But then, something incredible happened- he didn’t die. Instead he recovered and went on to build a tuberculosis sanitorium facility on Lake Saranac.
He coined his facility the Cure Cottage and opened its doors to other sufferers of tuberculosis. In a time with no medication existed for TB he advertised fresh mountain air and adequate nutrition as the two homeopathic treatments. As news of his success spread, people from all over flocked to the Saranac region and other cure cottages opened.
Trudeau began studying the disease in a makeshift laboratory in his room. He attempted to isolate and stain the organism which he believed caused tuberculosis, or tubercle bacillus. Soon Dr. E. R Baldwin of New Haven became Trudeau’s partner. He originally applied to be a patient at the sanitorium, but was asked to be a partner when Trudeau learned he self diagnosed himself after isolating the bacteria with a microscope. Trudeau’s cottage would go on to become the first research laboratory in the United States dedicated to tuberculosis research. It was eventually donated to Paul Smith College and now exists as a historical museum.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/8856.php#what_is_tuberculosis
The sanatoriums in the ADKs provide information about a specific part of history; they're a great resource. Your post made me wonder why the cold air helped cure TB and what the science was behind it. I imagined the air at these sanatoriums being cold and damp, but this article suggests that since the air was cold, there was no bacteria in the air so the body's immune system only had to fight the TB bacteria. That makes a lot of sense to me, and now that I think about it, if the air were cold, there would be less moisture in the air since the saturation humidity would be lower.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.minnesotamedicine.com/Past-Issues/Past-Issues-2007/December-2007/Clinical-Haddy-December-2007