For some patients, walking exercises on the winging road of the campus allowed some TB patients to be out in the freah air expanding their lungs.īut the Director of the sanitorium in the 1920s did report on some of the recreation provided for patients. They were not allowed to read or even talk, they could do nothing but sleep. Each day, patients were given long rest breaks when they were not allowed any form of entertainment. In winter patients would be dressed warmly in flannel, lying underneath many blankets. 7Īll patients who could stand the cold weather were expected to spend as much time as possible outside, some even sleeping there year-round. Screens were the only things separating the patients from the weather and, even in freezing cold conditions, the patients would be wheeled out each day to partake of the fresh air.
The original porches ran the length of the building and were not enclosed with glass. Patients could be expected to spend several hours per day on the porches, or solariums. Rest was the foundation for all tuberculosis treatments. TB patients on the porch of the Waverly Hills TB sanatorium His therapeutic regimen incorporated mountain air exercise abundant feeding including strong Hungarian wine and cognac rainbaths and ice-cold forest douches requiring the patient to ascend in the woods and stand under a waterfall of specified force and caliber under the direct supervision of Dr Brehmer himself.īy 1869 he had treated 958 patients of whom only 4.8 percent had died. By 1859 after considerable difficulties he had built a Kurhaus ("spa house" or "health resort") with 40 rooms, entertainment rooms and kitchens. So in 1854 Brehmer established an institution for the treatment of tuberculosis at Gorbersdorf in the mountains of Silesia. The explorer Alexander von Humboldt had also assured him that the disease did not exist in mounainous countries. Schonlein, the doctor who had previously suggested that the name "tuberculosis" be used as a generic term for all the manifestations of phthisis. His belief in the beneficial effects of life at high altitudes had been encouraged by his teacher J. He had himself recovered from TB whilst on an expedition in the Himalayan mountains. The work of the German doctor Hermann Brehmer was to mark a turning point in the treatment of TB throughout the world. It was only in 1882 when writing his obituary that the Lancet gave credit to his work. The medical establishment did not appreciate his work and in July 1840 the eminent medical journal the Lancet dismissed his ideas.
In addition to fresh air he allowed his patients 'a nutritious diet of mild, fresh animal and farinaceous food, aided by the stimulus of a proper quantity of wine, having regard to the general state and condition of the patient' 3 The patient ought never to be deterred by the state of the weather from exercise in the open air. The air out of doors, early in the morning either by riding or walking. He proposed a vastly different regimen based upon: He condemned the use of the two popular drugs of the day, digitalis and tartar emetic, as well as the practice of shutting patients up in a close room from which fresh air was as far as possible excluded. Meagre system of medical treatment of consumption in general use at the present day, the utter uselessness of which is so well known 2 It was George Bodington, a British doctor, who in 1840 published "An Essay on the Treatment and Cure of Pulmonary Consumption".
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