Why were tuberculosis sufferers sent to sanatoriums?

[Paulc]

Why were tuberculosis sufferers sent to sanatoriums?

Clearly there was a need to do something about treatment. From the mid 19th century and for the next 100 years sanatoriums fulfilled this role, but why??

[Janet]

Sanatoriums were a type of hospital situated most often in very airy places and the whole idea was to rest the lungs and fill them with good clean fresh air. This aided the recovery.There was one on Dartmoor just outside Brentor called the Didworthy Sanatorium. There was at least one in Torquay that I know of and one on the outskirts of Southampton and I think one on the South Downs. People slept in dormitories which were kept cold and with windows open day and night. These were around until late 1960's. Obviously Antibiotics helped to cut the scourge and TB more or less died out in the UK, except over latter years the immigrant poulation has brought it back again. Of course a better UK diet over the last 50 years has also helped to cut the disease back but the fresh air of yesteryear is no longer the main way to control the disease. Of course Antibiotics did not surface until the 1950's so it was the advent of antibiotics which enabled the programme of fresh air sanatoriums to be phased out.

Janet

[clematised]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanatorium

Sanitorium is a hospital

Edna

[WendyPusey]

We had one here on the Isle of Wight. It is now a Botanical garden.

http://www.botanic.co.uk/history/gardens.aspx

[Mary from Italy]

Some types of TB are contagious, so the patients need to be isolated.

[Breckland Jane]

My great grandmother was in the Sanitorium in Torquay in 1901, sadly it didn't help as she died back at home in Suffolk in 1902. The story in the family is that she contracted TB whilst helping to nurse her neighbour's children.

Jane

[Paulc]

thanks for the replies, my interest is because my great uncle died in harold court sanatorium in upminster, essex, aged 23, in 1923 and I was trying to look into the causes, history etc and why he was placed in such a place

[Olde Crone Holden]

TB was a "notifiable" disease, which meant it had to be reported to the authorities, who could step in and enforce treatment or isolation, or both, because there was no recognised cure and because it was such a contagious disease.

OC

[Christine in Herts]

An extra side detail...
I gather that some cases diagnosed as TB didn't respond as expected to the treatment. With hindsight, it is suspected that some of these cases could have been lung cancer and not TB at all.

Christine

[Somerset Sal]

There was a TB sanatorium at Ramsgate: my great grandfather died there in 1902 aged just 29. He left behind a wife and two little daughters.

[Chrissie Smiff]

I believe that there were one or two sanatoriums in Notts. I know that one 'Ransom sanitorium' was still used for a while after the need for a TB hospital because I visited my father in law there once when he was in for an orthopedic operation. There were windows all along the walls that opened out into a large garden. They seemed to think that they still needed to keep them all open too as it was freezing when we visited.

[Stella]

There was a big TB sanatorium here on the seafront in Lowestoft, it was called St Lukes.

[Lindsay]

This site has a bit of information (and pictures) about Harold Court Sanatorium (scroll down)

http://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/gazetteer.html

[Paulc]

thanks guys for all the info and thanks Lindsay for the link and the pics, really appreciate it. Very very sad when you look into it.

[andymak]

My father was in Clare Hall Sanatorium in South Mimms Hertfordshire, as TB was still rife in the 50's.

[Sue at the seaside]

I'm with Chrissie on those "open air " wards.
We had one in Bethnal Green Hospital (east London). The TB ward was very open and very cold, that was in the early 1970s, a sanitorium in the country would have been nicer, but a long way from family.

[Lindag]

My father was in Clare Hall Sanatorium in South Mimms Hertfordshire, as TB was still rife in the 50's.

Snap, my mother-in-law was there in 1951

Linda

[andymak]

Snap, my mother-in-law was there in 1951

Linda

There is a potted history of the hospital at http://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/clarehall.html now owned by Cancer reasearch UK.

[mrs bongo]

hi all
could some one help me im looking for any in regarding my uncle he had tb and was sent to sanatorium which was some where in Birmingham this was about 1958 & 1960
kind regards

[Elwyn]

I think until penicillin and antibiotics came on the market there was no very effective cure for TB. Rest and fresh air seemed to be about the best that medicine had to offer. To ensure that the air was reasonably fresh the TB hospitals tended to be in places like Dartmoor or the Scottish Highlands and generally well away from anywhere where there was heavy industry, smoke and pollution. Isolation also prevented the disease from being spread, though as we know nowadays, you have to have fairly intimate contact with someone to catch it. But they probably didn't know that in the 1800s and early 1900s.