THE SANATORIUM TREATMENT OF CONSUMPTON

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 2, 1 May 1903, Page 97

THE SANATORIUM TREATMENT OF CONSUMPTON

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4^^\j^feY claim to be heard on %miWm/mI 'kh:i s subject, not being a jlin/iuv mecu 'cal man, is this. zLsg^Jk. Three years ago, in Eng--^r^p^- land, I was in advanced consumption. I underwent the open-air treatment at Nordrach-upon-Mendip, the famous Sanatorium in Somersetshire, with the result that to-day I am free from disease,, and — though not inclined to challenge Sandow — perfectly able to fulfil the duties of my profession. The Sanatorium treatment will always be associated with the name of Dr. Otto Walther, of NordrachColonie in the Black Forest, who is practically the father of the treatment. Years ago, as a young' man, Dr. Walther was a throat and chest specialist in Germany. He had longdevoted himself to the study of phthisis, and had become entirely dissatisfied with the then methods of treatment. He had come to believe that the only cure for the disease was fresh air and over-feed-ing, but no opportunity had occure/1 of testing his theory. An opportunity, however, came. His wife became consumptive. He at once took her to the Black Forest. 'Te put up a wooden sfielter which was fully exDOsed to the air, and here they lived for nearly a year until Mrs. Walther was completely cured. Men laughed at the madness of the Doctor, but the cure was undeniVol. VIII.— No. 2.— T.

able. Other consumptives, hearing of the case, asked for treatment, A small sanatorium was built in the Black Forest, which has since developed into the world-famed Nordrach Colonie. Of late sanatoria have sprung up everywhere, especially in England. The large proportion of cures have demonstrated beyond a doubt the entire success of the treatment. In New Zealand the treatment does 'not seem so widely known, though there is at least one Sanatorium here. It has struck me, as a" new chum," that the general attitude toward the disease here is not nearly so hopeful as in Ensland. Consumption is still, I find, regarded by the majority as incurable, and often the most lamentable misconceptions prevail as to its treatment. To correct these misconceptions and to give hope to consumptives are the objects of this article. Now the Sanatorium treatment may be said, roughly, to have a three-fold aim : — (1) To check the waste. (2) To reduce the Fever. (3) To prevent the spread, and to decrease the number, of Bacilli. Let us take these in order. The Sanatorium treatment strives to check the waste of consumption by proper feeding. A great deal .of nonsense has been said and written about the way consumptives are

" stuffed " in sanatoria. I regret to say that even the statements of old patients do not always scrupulously adhere to fact. To illustrate, I knew a lady who was about to enter as a patient at Nordrachupon- Mendip. A gentleman who had been cured there called upon her. " I understand," he said, " that you are going to the Sanatorium on the Mendips." She conceded the fact. " I thought," he said, " that you would like to know something about the life there and the treatment." The lady expressed herself grateful for his' attention. " Well," said the visitor, looking the patient-elect in the face with every appearance of candour, " the only difficulty is the feeding. At breakfast, for instance, you are compelled to eat six of whatever is provided. If it is sausages, you must eat six, if eggs six, if bacon, six rashers, if fish six ordinary helpings, in addition to ten slices of bread, and fourteen pats of butter.'' The lady was alarmed and expressed doubts to her husband afterwards of the advisability of going to the Sanatorium. However, she did go, and was considerably surprised to find on sitting down to breakfast the first morning that she had to eat but one slice of bread and butter. The fact is, a patient in a consumptive sanatorium eats little more than a healthy person outside. I have often seen a man at a table d'hote dinner eat far more than a doctor would ever think of forcing upon a patient. The food may seem a huge lot to the patient himself, simply because having no appetite, all eating is distasteful to him ; but he is forced to eat no more than he requires. The waste of the disease must be checked, and there is only one way of doing it — by eating. It is an extremely unpleasant way, truly. I have often sat two hours and longer at my mid-day meal, literally fighting for every mouthful ; but the reward would come at the weekly

weighing, when I saw the lever go up " bump/ and knew that another pound was added to my weight, another stride taken towards recovery. It is really marvellous how thin, emanciated, deathly-looking patients put on flesh after a few weeks' compulsory feeding, and, like the Hebrew boys in Babylon, become " fairer and fatter in flesh that all the children that did eat the portion of the King's meat."'

me second ami of the Sanatorium treatment is to reduce the fever. This is done by proper rest.

Undoubtedly the best method of rest is to lie in bed, and this is al-

ways prescribed for a real fever case ; bed for weeks and months if needful, until the temperature at least approaches normal. Semifebrile patients rest outdoors in deck chairs or hammocks, only those who ha,ve little or no fever may take exercise. When the temperature becomes normal, exercise is of course encouraged. Short walks are at first taken, always under the direction of the Doctor, and the temperature is taken immediately on returning. If it is

high, the patient has gone too far, and a shorter walk is prescribed next day ; if the temperature is not raised abnormally, the same distance may again be traversed. The length of the walk increases with the strength of the patient, some who are nearly cares walking as

much as ten miles daily, but the exercise is always regulated by the temperature in the way I haive indicated above. There are prescribed hours for rest for all the " walking 1 " patient s, and no person ia allowed to take any exercise during those hours, of any description whatsoever. The patient must lie back on a couch and .." laze/ and after a long walk, duty usually coincides with inclination. This compulsory rest is one of the great advantages 1 of residence in a Sanatorium. At home, the one thing a consumptive will not do is rest. His temperature may be high, but he does not feel particularly ill, *o he takes a long walk, and talks for an hour on returning ; he cycles^ — or even plays tennis ! I knew one man whose lungs were badly diseased, who actually went through an exhausting course of dumb-bell exercises daily, hoping thereby to bene-

lit himself ! The result of such indiscretion is that th© temperature does not have a chance to drop ; the exertion adds fire to the fuel of disease • the candle is lighted both ends, and only one . result is possible. Nothing can be done with consumption until the fever is, reduced, and the rest enforced under the Sanatorium treatment is the most successful method of its reduction. The checking of the waste, and the reduction of the fever, both tend to prevent the spread and to decrease the number of tubercle bacilli, whose presence in the lung is the cause of the disease. But the greatest adversary of the bacillus is fresh air, pure and uncontaminated. Therefore the patient is always in the open-air. When in bed, he is practically out of doors, for each bedroom is fitted with a large cabinet window which, night and day, winter and summer, cold and heat, is never closed. The wind may

sweep the photos from his mantelpiece ; the rain and snow may beat into the room ; he may wake in the morning to find his sponge a brick, and the ice in his water-jug unbreakable, yet the window is kept

wide open. The meals are taken in a dining-room with the windows open — I have eaten my breakfast with the snow blowing across the table — and the shelters in the grounds afford protection only from the rain. No notice, with the exception of wind, is taken of the weather. An extremely high wind is injurious, and patients do not walk against it. " But don't you take cold V asks the gentle reader, alarmed. Gentle reader, we do not. For eighteen months — including two severe winters in England — T carried out the Sanatorium treatment in

all its strictness. I never wore an overcoat, a hat only in the heat of summer ; I sat out of doors on the coldest days ; I had my window wide open on the coldest nights ; J was drenched with rain and snow ; yet, during the whole of that, time I had not so much as the suspicion of a cold. Neither have I known one solitary person " catch cold '' under the treatment. Closed -up rooms give cold, and contact with an infected person : damp and draughts, fog and cold do not. The very first lesson a patient must learn at a Sanatorium is that all

that he has been taught from his youth up concerning draughts and cold is most utterly and perniciously wrong. The draught from an open window prevents cold — it cannot by any possibility cause it. It is easy, of course, to pooh-pooh this, but the fact is incontrovertible. Night and day the patients in a Sanatorium are exoosed to draughts, yet colds are never heard of. And if some one should ask why ordinary people take cold more in the winter than the summer, seeing damp and cold are innocuous, the answer is easy. In the winter you close your windows, in the

summer you open them ; hence your immunity from cold.

Now I have roughly described the modern treatment of consumption. What are its results ? The record of Nordrach-Colonie in the Black Forest (the parent Sanatorium), will suffice as an answer. At Nor-drach-Colonie, since its opening, over ninety per cent of the patients treated have been cured. Better percentage than that could not be obtained in a hospital for measles. An incurable disease, yet ninety per cent absolute cures ! I would, if need were, give the names and ad-

dresses of scores who once were weak, and ill, and helpless, but who are now pursuing their vocations in perfect health. There is hope for the consumptive ; he need be regarded as an incurable no longer ; in the Sanatorium treatment is salvation, it has passed beyond the stage of mere experiment into that of proved success. Phthisis, especially in the early stages, can be cured as surely as any other disease. It may take a considerable time— for consumption is not as a

cut finger, but of the possibility of cure, there is now no shadow of doubt. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that when the enemies) of the early Church " saw the man that was healed, they could say nothing against it." In answer to those who pooh-pooh and ridicule (as some may do on reading this article), we point to " the man that was healed " : the men and women who, to-day, are strong and well through the Sanatorium treatment, are its all-triumphant vindication.