Fight Against Tuberculosis
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the bacillus that causes tuberculosis (TB). The bacterium, only one 25,000th of an inch, is transmitted through the air when a person with an active infection coughs, sneezes, or speaks. The disease usually attacks the lungs, and symptoms may include coughing up blood, fatigue, weight loss and fever. In developed countries, TB (once known as consumption because its victims seemed to waste away) is little more than a historical footnote, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were almost 13,000 cases of TB in the United States in 2008. The World Health Organization estimates that the disease kills someone every 20 seconds – nearly 5,000 people every day.
From the 18th through the early 20th centuries TB was the leading killer in Europe and North America. Tuberculosis was not only a disease, it was a social phenomenon that resulted in the formation of a public health system to control the disease and protect the general population. It was, and remains, a threat in places where poverty and cramped living conditions increase the risk of infection, and where few health facilities offer treatment. Without treatment, active TB can be fatal. Today, one-third of the world’s population is infected, although 90 percent of those have latent TB which is not transmissible and does not always develop into active TB.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was felt that a distinction should be made between health resorts or therapeutic facilities – many of which were famous for their comfortable facilities with nourishing food and mineral springs for drinking and bathing - and hospitals for the treatment of tuberculosis. Accordingly, the Latin verb root sano, meaning to heal, instead of the Latin noun sanitas, meaning health, emphasized the need for scientific healing or treatment and was the basis of the new word sanatorium. By the time the Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Talihina opened in 1921, the distinction between sanitorium and sanatorium had been recognized for more than a decade.
In the 1950’s, the drug treatment combination of streptomycin (STM or S), p-aminosalicylic acid (PAS or P), and isoniazid (INH) resulted in a 90-95% cure rate. As a result of effective drug therapy, outpatient treatment, and improved social and economic conditions many of the nation’s sanatoriums were closed and/or demolished when tuberculosis no longer presented a major public health threat. This was true for the Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium when in 1975, the facility was transferred from the Oklahoma Dept. of Health to the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs for operation as the Oklahoma Veterans Center-Talihina Division, after 54 years of service to over 14,000 first-time patients (not including patient re-admissions or patients receiving outpatient treatment at its clinic or clinics throughout the region).
The Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium’s association with the preceding century’s crusade against tuberculosis and its outstanding collection of buildings is the basis for submission as a historic preservation resource.
Mannion, Annemarie. 2009. Conspicuous consumption. The Rotarian
^ ab"The Sanatorium Age. 'Sanitarium:'"Sanatorium' vs', An History of the Fight Against Tuberculosis in Canada]
http://www.lung.ca/tb/tbhistory/sanatoriums/type.html
Tuberculosis in America: The People’s Plague, DVD. A film by Diane Garey and Lawrence R. Hott 1995, Santa Monica, CA: Direct Cinema 2008.