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Wednesday, May 28, 2003Accounts of Dr. Trudeau's nurses and patients, teased from diaries and interviews with survivors, are gathered in a large photo-filled book, "Portrait of Healing: Curing in the Woods" (North Country Books, 2002), by Dr. Victoria E. Rinehart, a nurse in Burlington, Vt. Unlike some of the other accounts dwelling on the suffering of the patients, this book, with a foreword by Garry Trudeau, the creator of "Doonesbury" and great-grandson of the founder, paints a remarkably happy picture of the sanitarium. ....These were the days before there were drugs to treat tuberculosis, a leading killer in the United States. Most patients back home were left to wither and die. At the sanitarium, many patients died or were sent home to die. But they were not allowed to wither. They were commanded to maintain a positive attitude in an effort to ward off the illness. ... Dr. Trudeau told his patients when to rest, what to eat and how to socialize. Mandatory arts and crafts classes were considered an adjunct to treatment. (Dr. Trudeau was usually too sick to go to dances and formal dinners that he insisted his patients attend.) ...Alcohol and intimate liaisons were strictly forbidden, though prohibitions may have fostered frequent boozing and romance. Historians of the Trudeau cure have found a trove of love letters revealing clandestine affairs, often adulterous. It was all very adolescent, with patients referring to their secret lovers as cousins and their favorite spot for courtship on the compound as the Cousinola, Dr. Rinehart writes. Despite Dr. Trudeau's insistence on a rigid life, patients sought the cure. Perhaps, as Dr. Rinehart said, patients were seeking hope and companionship more than remedies. "I looked for some negatives and couldn't find them," Dr. Rinehart said. The oldest patient she interviewed, she said, was 95 and had been there as a patient and then as a nurse supervisor. "Obviously when one looks backward, the memory could be distorted," Dr. Rinehart said. "But I couldn't find anyone alive today that didn't have anything but glowing things to say." The review points out that historians are skeptical. Back in the days before antibiotics, tuberculosis patients went through all manner of horrible “cures.” They had their lungs collapsed intentionally, sometimes just by puncturing the chest wall, sometimes by adding foreign material to the chest cavity to keep them collapsed. (I remember once reading about a case in which lucite balls were packed in the chest.) But most of the time, they went to these santariums for the “rest cure,” where they lived by strict rules until their tuberculosis either killed them or went into its natural dormancy stage. A good, first hand account of living in a tuberculosis sanitarium is The Plague and I, by Betty MacDonald, creator of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Ma and Pa Kettle. (The latter a spin-off of the movie version of her hilarious book about life in the rural Pacific Northwest, The Egg and I.) This is MacDonald’s description of leaving home for the asylum: As we drove off I turned and waved and waved to the children. They stood on the sidewalk, squinting against the sun. Young, long-legged, and defenseless. I loved them so much that I felt my heart draining and wondered if I was leaving a trail behind me like the shiny mark of a snail. Once at the sanitarium, she would only be allowed to see them once a month for no more than ten minutes. Children were too disturbing to patients. And then there were the rigidly applied rules: ”Patients must not read. Patients must not write. Patients must not talk. Patients must not laugh. Patients must not sing. Patients must lie still. Patients must not reach. Patients must relax. Patients must...” I was ready for the bath so I interrupted to ask if I might put a little cold water into the steaming tub or if there was a rule that patients must be boiled. She describes a life of enforced bedrest, twenty-four hours a day, under the watchful eye of doctors and nurses. (And I do mean strict. They weren’t even allowed bathroom privileges but had to use the bedpan.) A bedrest that was enforced by constant reminders that any failure of the cure was solely the fault of the patient for failing to adhere to the rules. She also describes a kind of slave-labor system, in which patients who were further along in their cures were allowed to indulge in gradually increasing levels of activity - most of which consisted of performing menial labor for the sanatariam. It isn’t a pretty tale, but it’s told with a biting wit, which makes it an enteraining read despite its depressing subject matter. Not to mention a sobering reminder of just how paternalistic medicine can be. posted by Sydney on 5/28/2003 06:40:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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