Krugerud - Interrupted lives: the history of tuberculosis in Minnesota and Glen Lake Sanatorium

Interrupted Lives

A History of Tuberculosis in Minnesota and Glen Lake Sanatorium

Mary Krugerud

Copyright 2017 Mary Krugerud

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-68201-065-5 (paper)
ISBN: 978-1-68201-082-2 (ebook)

First edition: September 2017

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by

North Star Press
19485 Estes Road
Clearwater, Minnesota 55320
www.northstarpress.com

Dedication

To:
~All former patients and employees of Glen Lake Sanatorium and Oak Terrace Nursing home, especially those who shared their memories and photos.

~Norma Anderson, who planted the seed for this book with her collection of interviews, San Memories.

~Colleen Spadaccini and Steve Perkins, fellow collaborators on the Glen Lake and Oak Terrace 75th anniversary documentary.

~Staff members at the Hopkins Historical Society, Hennepin History Museum, Minnetonka Historical Society, and the Minnesota History Centers Gale Library for assistance with this project.

~My family, because my interest in tuberculosis sanatoriums baffles them, and they support my efforts anyway.

A young Frederick Manfred. (From the University of Minnesota Anderson Libary archives; used with the permission of the Manfred Literary Committee)

March 1940. Feike Feikema, an unemployed journalist, is admitted to Glen Lake Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis. His bed is in the corner of a room he will share with three other men. An orderly tells Feikema that the previous occupant of that bed, a Finn named Toivo, was there sixteen years before he went home, cured. Feikema thinks, Holy smokes, sixteen years... Do I have to stay here that long? Fifty years later, when he was a successful author known as Frederick Manfred, he recalled that he was too sick at the time to regard it with much alarm. If you are vital and alive, he said, of course, then you think that is terrible. But when youre down to almost the last dregs of your life, you dont have any sense that its terrible. Youre just happy that for the moment youre feeding well and youre sleeping in a warm bed. So you dont think about that.

THE SANATORIUM ERA, lasting approximately 100 years, played an important role the control of tuberculosis in the United States. At the height of the era, more than 700 of the institutions existed in the United States, and their physicians and employees shared knowledge via organizations and conferences. Administrators worked closely with local anti-tuberculosis associations on education campaigns. Doctors collaborated on milk pasteurization legislation that made tuberculosis a preventable disease before it was curable. Non-medical staff at sanatoriums developed or influenced many now-common practices in the areas of educational, occupational and vocational therapies. Patients from several sanatoriums played a vital part in the search for a cure by volunteering to participate in drug trials.

Several books have reported on the medical history of tuberculosis and the social experience of illness. Many have focused on the first half of the sanatorium era, with its relentless monotony of bed rest and the absurdity of sleeping outside year-round. The total sanatorium experience from the patients perspective is sparsely documented, however. The stigma of poverty or uncleanliness that accompanied tuberculosis meant that few who experienced a sanatorium were willing to talk about it. In addition, little of the existing literature informs us about children in tuberculosis sanatoriums.

In 1949, the Minnesota Public Health Association sponsored the publication of Invited and Conquered: a Historical Sketch of Tuberculosis in Minnesota. The author, J. Arthur Myers, M.D., detailed the history of tuberculosis in Minnesota from 1659 to 1949. Chapter Sixteen profiled sanatoriums operating at the time of publication, but the books main focus was on the medical community involved in the states fight against tuberculosis. Myerss assistant in gathering early background material was Theodore Streukens, a medical student who had been a patient at Glen Lake Sanatorium as a teenager. Tragically, Streukenss tuberculosis reactivated. He was re-admitted to the sanatorium, where he died in 1940.

More than 15,000 people sought a cure at Glen Lake Sanatorium in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The sanatorium is well-documented in the Minnesota Historical Societys archives. This wealth of information reveals a treatment regimen far more complex than just fresh air, rest, and sunshine. This book, based primarily on that collection, explores every facet of care and treatment at Glen Lake Sanatorium, including the childrens preventorium and summer camp. In particular, it tells the story of one physician, Ernest S. Mariette, who was dedicated to creating what he called the contented patient.

GLEN LAKE WAS PART OF A SYSTEM of sanatoriums authorized by the legislature to fight a contagious disease that, at the time, was the leading cause of death in the world. The sanatorium opened on January 4, 1916, to serve residents of Hennepin County, Minnesota, who had tuberculosis. A snowstorm on that daydescribed as a howling, icy galedid not prevent a horse-drawn sleigh from transporting a buffalo-robed man twelve miles from St. Louis Park to the sanatorium.

Dr. Herbert O. Collins, superintendent, extended the official greeting to Andrew Gibson, age forty-three. Gertrude Moore, resident nurse in charge, was among the greeters, along with Dr. Walter Marcley, a respected expert on tuberculosis. He had served as a surgeon for the U.S. Army during World War I and in various capacities with several hospitals and the Minnesota Department of Health. Dr. Ernest S. Mariette and twelve licensed nurses also welcomed the first patient to the institution that would be his home until he recovered or died. The unbalanced staff-to-patient ratio was temporaryall fifty beds in the new tuberculosis hospital were spoken for.

Most of the first patients to populate the sanatorium were transfers from the City Hospital in Minneapolis. Once that migration was completed in April, others arrived from Thomas Hospital and University Hospital. Those institutions would continue to maintain isolation wards for tuberculous patients, but people with moderate or far-advanced tuberculosis would henceforth receive treatment in the sanatorium.

Tuberculosis, commonly referred to as TB, is as old as civilization. In 460 B.C.E., Hippocrates identified phthisis as the most prevalent disease of his time.infected person, but prevailing theories included hereditary predisposition and unconventional lifestyles. The deaths of famous writers, composers, and actors seemed to support a relationship between creativity and tuberculosis. Among those dying were Frederic Chopin, composer; Anton Chekov, playwright; Robert Louis Stevenson, writer; and members of the Bront family. Poet Alexander Pope survived tuberculosis, but it caused him to be hunchbacked.

Tuberculosis is contagious, though, and spread primarily through the air via phlegm or sputum during a cough or sneeze. Its underlying cause remained unknown until improved magnification capabilities of the microscope enabled German physician Robert Koch to isolate and identify the rod-shaped bacillus,