I am doing genealogy research on my maternal line and my grandmother contracted TB sometime in the early 1940's. My grandfather was a Naval doctor in WWII and the 3 kids were separated to live with 3 different paternal relatives while she was hospitalized. Her illness and their separation changed the entire dynamic of their family. I was told she was in several sanatoriums and was a participant in voluntary medical and surgical emeriments over 7 years. My research is not detailed but I believe she was released around 1948. She died at the age of 69 in 1977 and lived all those years with only the use of the two lower lobes of her lungs. Even tho we were very close, Gram and I never had any conversations about her experiences. It has only been thru my research that I realized what she and her family endured.

Sometime in the early 1900's, my great grandfather, an Irish immigrant with five children, contracted tb and was confined to a Sanitorium, most likely the Brooklyn Home for Consumption, since they lived in Greenpoint and this institution took in mostly the poor. My mother recalls the painful experiences her mother told, of her dad having to leave the family, with young children and a wife who would now be the head of the household. Back then, there was such a tremendous amount of shame brought to a family with a tb diagnosis, a sentence with no hope in sight, especially before antibiotics. My grandmother remembers seeing her father on the street, but she couldn't cross the street to be near him, since he was contagious. My great grandmother works in a laundry as an ironer and raises five children in New York City alone...

My grandfather, Ivor Johns, passed away from TB in 1940 at the age of 48. Unfortunately, I never knew him. He and my grandmother had immigrated from Newport, Wales in 1913---first to Vancouver and then to Cleveland, Ohio. He was an artist, specifically of very large murals. In preparation for his art, he would visit some of the poorer areas of Cleveland, where he would enjoy conversations with immigrants from Europe, many of whom appeared in his paintings. But, unfortunately, it was in those crowded conditions where he contracted TB. One of his murals stands today in the Cleveland City Hall chambers. Not knowing him has always been a regret, but I do have some of his smaller paintings which served as sketches for the murals.

i am nearly 88 and a TB survivor. From Feb 1950 until July 1953, I was a patient at the sanatorium named Victor Cullen State Hospital in Sabilasvikle, MD. Luckily, I did not need surgery. Streptomycin and PAS (paraminosalycylic acid) helped me. I believe the doctors were from Russia and were very good. My younger sister was admitted a few months after I was. She had to have an upper lobe removed and was fortunate to have her O negative blood donated by the Shriners and a volunteer fire department, in Glen Burnie, Ithink. She lived a normal life until she developed beast cancer and then leukemia, passing away at the age of 68. I an so grateful for the good care we received during our stay at the sanatorium. When we were there, there were at least six other patients from our area in western Maryland.

As a child, my grandmother told me about her mother who passed away at the age of 27 from tuberculosis . My grandmother was the youngest of five children . She was allowed to stand at the doorway to say goodbye to her mother before she died. The passing of her mother, caused turmoil within the family. Her father moved to his sisters home so he could work and the children would have someone to watch over them. My great-aunt had now seven children to feed and clothe. My great -grandfather worked as an oyster man to help provide for the family.

This is not an advertisement. This hospital does not market except to have transfer contracts with TB Programs in other states along with those in Texas. For 21 years, I have been the administrator for a state-owned long term acute hospital treating hard-to-treat TB for people who remain hospitalized from 6 months through two years or more.

In truth, my story is that I was very disappointed to think that my career had ended when all that was open to me in middle age was to contract with the Commissioner of Health in 1994 to see if the two remaining Texas TB hospitals had any other use now that patient treatment for the infection was firmly in outpatient programs. How quickly I learned about "forgotten": facilities that needed "keep and upgrade or end" decisions, but certainly could not be used much longer; patients whose treatment could not safely be continued as outpatients; patient apathy, high-risk lifestyles and stigma; patient complications and comorbidities; and need for at least one specialty facility that just would not go away. Five tries and thirteen years later, when adequate funding and admirable plans were accepted, the Texas Center for Infectious Disease was built and has been in use for over five years.

My saga is that I had to remember to see the humanity of each patient when they finally could respond to the inpatient therapy and organize the therapies accordingly. These patients were not "financially undesirable" people, smelly wrecks to be overlooked, unfortunate overseas travelers, or numbers in research projects. I had to remember that I could respond by using my calling and skills to help develop a comprehensive center that could focus with care on each individual over the time they need hospitalization, and could be an attraction for people to share their skills and warmth in their caregiving. I always knew that there are diseases that just are not revenue sources, they just don't respond happily and quickly to modern technology, their recipients are cruelly flawed by those diseases, and recovery is not only possible but it can be expected if we, the caregivers, are prepared and willing. Changing to gratitude from embarrassment and disappointment has been a saga, a very worthwhile saga.

Not being preachy, the hardest personal saga was to see that this public health career, humbling and difficult as it is, is acceptable. A certain ego strength is necessary in higher order provision of health care services and taking the lead to order its resources. Success is often and easily measured in relative personal income, bigness in organizational size and accomplishments, difficulty of the practice, and honors bestowed. Thankfully, other measure of success are also part of our lives.

I was in kindergarten in Springfield, Ohio in 1944 when we were given a TB skin test. I tested positive for TB and was given a chest x-ray to confirm. Apparently there was a dark area on my lungs. I was then taken out of school and sent to the Clark Co. Sanitarium near Springfield. I was in an area of all boys my age. My parents and sister visited weekly until my parents moved to Arizona. A Dr. had told them the Arizona climate would be good for myself and Mother. I do not remember any coughing or other symptoms. We only went outside a few times a year. I recall there was one day when we were all given some oral medication that tasted terrible. After about 15 months there I was released to move to Arizona to be with my family again. In Arizona the local Doctor would not let me attend public school when he heard where I had been. After a year of home school we tried again with a different Doctor and he permitted me to attend school again at the end of the 2nd grade. When I was in high school my doctor sent for the original X-rays and determined that I never had TB. My mother then recalled that I had had the flu sometime just prior to the kindergarten skin test. Maybe I didn't have TB but I was surely exposed to it.

My mother had TB in the late '40's and early '50's, and spent three years in sanitoriums- one was Pine Knoll in Davenport Iowa and the other was in Colorado but I'm not sure which. She was very secretive about it and had her left lung removed. I did not know until I was 18 years old and she told me about it, and that it was something that was not talked about. She acted very ashamed of it and I think it had a tremendous psychological impact on her. She was told she should not have any children yet she had four of us and none have tested positive for tb either the tine test or the mantoux ppd test. I would like to know more about this subject and feel it would help me understand her. She died in 1999 from pneumonia in her one remaining lung.

My family's TB story dates back to 1902 before the prevalence of sanatoriums. My great aunt and her husband who suffered with TB follow the medical advice of the doctor and travel from MI to FL and eventually to CA in search of 'health'. Their 2 year odyssey is chronicled in his handwritten diary. He describes the horrible coughing 'fits'and fatigue that haunt him, and how his wasting away is a slow death he does not wish his new bride to see. The last two months he is too weak to even write so my great aunt finishes the diary. They return to MI in time for Christmas and his passing.

My father, Henry A. Goebel, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1912. At about the age of 10 he contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Sunnyside Sanitarium for treatment. He spoke of being there with other children and sleeping on porches in the cold. The morgue was in the basement of the facility and a frequent dare was for a child to run through the morgue at night. My father had his turn to make the run and I'm sure it terrified him, but he did it. He was there (as far as I know) for about two years. I don't believe he was visited by family at all during that time. He did return to the family then and graduated with high grades from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis (along with Derwood Kirby.)

In 1972, I had a routine tb test at a public health clinic, which was a requirement to work in a restaurant. A preliminary skin test was administered on my arm to see if there would be any reaction. Was there ever! A fairly wide streak ran practically from my wrist to my elbow, which completely freaked out the people at the public health clinic because they'd never seen such a reaction. However, a chest x-ray showed absolutely nothing in my lungs, so the clinic concluded that my reaction to the skin test was just a fluke. Over the next eight years,I became very weak and suffered from severe abdominal and menstrual pain. I saw dozens of doctors, none of whom would take me seriously until 1980. As it turns out, my reproductive system and gastrointestinal track were so damaged by tb lesions that they were barely functioning. The surgeon said that he couldn't believe I was even alive, much less functioning. I then learned that tb can attach itself anywhere in your body, including your bones, and I even know a man whose wife died of tb of the brain. The lesson? Don't let doctors blow you off when you know something's wrong!

my grandmother lost her baby brother,and her mother and grandmother to TB in West Virginia in the late 1800s and early 1900. Her mother died when she was 18 months old. She went to live with relatives along with her sister.

My father's mother died from TB in 1929 after a
two year battle with the disease in her thirties.
She was living in Dade City, FL and was sent home
to Alabama to die. His father did could not afford a train ticket, so she was allowed to ride
in the baggage car, along with my father and his
infant sister. My father said when they arrived
they were all covered from head to toe with black
soot - just what someone with TB needs, right?
It was assumed by relatives that my father also
had TB as he was so skinny, but it was just malnourishment - it was the Depression, remember.
We recently celebrated his 98th birthday....:<)

My sister and I were taken out of our homes and placed in Comstock Childrens Hospital in Tucson. I was 3 and my sister was 6. I stayed there for 18 months and my sister for 6 months. The hospital has long been shut down and was never able to get any records of my stay. I've not tested positive on a TB test so don't know the criteria they used to diagnose us. Our family was isolated and stigmatized by the diagnosis. Very sad sad memories including punishment for giggling, meals consisting of a plate of white rice, being scorned for sucking my thumb, times of being taken into a dark room where an NG tube was inserted...have no idea why. Very sad.

My story is, no! I never had TB but have been treated with the series of TB shots before entering in the Medical Field many years ago, my job at the time required employees to take the TB series to protect us from patients who had the disease. But my main story is TB among many homeless people who are walking around on the streets with TB and not being treated for it. Than they come indoors and spread it without telling anyone that they have it. That is a big problem in the United States. I have met people who contacted TB and still living with it for years without being treated, so this disease is not killing people like it has in the past. So what can the medical field do to protect these people or help them get treated? It is very rampart among the homeless population..

Any little cough, and we were carted off to the hospital for chest x-rays just to be sure it wasn't TB even in the 1970s. Having been a doctor since the 1920s, he had treated many TB patients and knew how deadly this disease was. People are so careless about the way they cough or men with spitting in public and men are back to wearing beards. It seems that we truly have forgotten how deadly and easily transmitted these diseases are.

In September 1943 when I was 14 months old, my father found out he had TB. My mother was 6 months pregnant with my sister. My father knew a man who was cured of TB by his stay at a sanitarium in Socorro, New Mexico, so he left Chicago and us for New Mexico. Because of events that took place there, he was never part of our family again. He was supposedly cured at one time but had a relapse and TB spread to other parts of his body before he died in New Mexico in 1956. To my knowledge, he was the only person in our family to have TB.

I am an 83 year old man who lived the experiences shown in this story. I was diagnosed in 1949 at age 17 and had the upper lobe of my left lung removed. I very nearly died when tubercule bacilli spilled into my chest cavity. In fact one doctor told my mother that I was going to die. But noone told me and with the help of streptomycin and INH and PAS I am here writing this today. I was a cottage mate of Larry Doyle, the former NY Giant baseball player shown in the final Trudeau scene. I have a very funny story to tell about myself and Larry. He was known to over imbibe at times and on one particular night I awoke in the early morning hours and had to go to the bathroom. I went quietly so as to not disturb my fellow cottage mates. As I opened the door to the toilet booth in the bathroom, I turned on the light and almost jumped out of my shoes, because there was Larry fast asleep on the toilet. I still remember the incident with great humor. I could continue writing many experiences of my stay in Trudeau but I had to share that one.

My parents thought because of my sickly condition, unable to gain weight at seven years old (I was 30 lbs), I had to have TB. They applied for my admittance to the Mississippi State Health Preventorium, adjacent to the sanitorium in Magee, MS. This was 1940. I joined other patients from four to 12 years old. We had strict routine of eating balance meals, naps and long night sleeps, outdoor play except in rainy weather. Our official uniform for boys and girls was a pair of white bloomers. No shoes except in winter. We had option of wearing a tee. I was there from April to August. The campus had its own dairy and food was locally grown. The barber chopped off our hair alike. School classes were provided. The campus had a pond, swimming pool, and manicured grounds to play and walk. We were required to be weighed weekly and checked for signs of TB. We were x-rayed often, as that was the only way to detect the disease. This strict regime actually helped the majority of patients. Fortunately, the Health Department never had a single child take or bring in tuberculosis. They more or less helped unhealthy children learn good health habits. We have a Facebook page where anyone who attended Mississippi Preventorium can share their memories. Every two years we have a reunion. I am one of the few oldest attendees.

I have my grandmother's diaries from 1903 through 1906. In it she writes about taking her sister, who had TB, from Ontario, Canada, to Saranac Lake, NY, where her sister lived in a cure cottage. I believe that my grandmother worked as a servant in the cure cottage to pay for her sister's care. At a later point, she took her sister to Ray Brook, then a public sanatarium, now a prison. Both of my grandmother's parents died of TB, as did two of her sisters.

When I was born my mother was an active TB patient in the sanitarium in Honolulu Hawaii. My Dad was active duty Navy. I was raised for 18 months by my dad and my God Mother. Seeing this on PBS gave me a much grater understanding of my family dynamics. My parents died when I was 12 years old and I can know see how the realities of TB guided them before they died of cancer and emphysema ND HEART disease. THANK YOU. MARY

In late 1955, at the age of 3, my brother was diagnosed with active TB and sent to North Reading State Sanatorium (north of Boston), where he remained for two years. A younger cousin followed him there about six months later, and he too was in for two years. Both boys had contracted the disease from our great uncle, who was living with our grandparents and had exposed several of us young children to his illness during our frequent visits to the house. There was a long, painful history of TB in my grandmother’s family—five of her nine siblings had died of it many years before—and its appearance again in my brother and cousin so many years later was terrifying for everyone. Since I too had been exposed (I was 2 at the time), I was watched very closely for many months, getting frequent chest x-rays, having my temperature taken twice a day, and being forced to eat protein and drink a lot of milk. Thankfully I never turned active.

Though I remember very little about those two years, it was such a difficult time for my parents that after my brother recovered and returned home, they almost never spoke of it. Once the word had gotten out that there was TB in our family, my parents’ friends and acquaintances fell away, and they were essentially abandoned by everyone (even in the mid-’50s, there was still such fear about TB that victims and their families were stigmatized). My brother, too, has rarely spoken about his hospitalization. Young as he was, he remembers enough of this traumatic experience to never want to revisit it.

Since TB’s prevalence in this country has declined so dramatically, most people, having had no direct experience of it, don’t understand the fear it invoked, and the costs—physical, social, mental, and emotional—that it exacted from its victims and families. It leaves deep scars.

In the late 1950's, my father was diagnosed with TB; two of his brothers had died of the disease some years earlier. He also had a sister who had TB; she stayed several years in a santorium for treatment. At that time, a person's lungs were "collasped" to allow healing. One of her lungs never revived itself. It was very horrible for our family when my father found out he had TB. He stayed 18 months in a state hospital located in Rome, GA; its name was Battey State Hospital. People now think TB is not a serious illness, but it is. When there is news about some terrorist country using germ warfare, I've never heard TB mentioned. However, I feel it would be a very viable way to paralyze a nation. I have watched the programs on this vile disease, and I hope people who do are more aware of how dangerous it was and still is.

TB is still a plague, in America but especially in the developing world. The WHO reports that in 2013, 9 million people fell ill with TB and 1.5 million died from the disease. Even here in the US, with access to the very best healthcare, TB is almost as hard to diagnose and treat as it was decades ago. And being a TB patient is an incredible ordeal.

I was diagnosed with TB in March, 2013. I was in graduate school at the time. At the first symptoms, the Dr thought I had a virus and sent me home - and back to class. The second Dr I saw had recently seen a case of TB and suspected TB. An xray was “suggestive of TB”, but diagnostic tools are limited, and it took weeks of frustrating tests to confirm my diagnosis. When I began treatment, I had an allergic reaction to the cocktail of four strong antibiotics. I had to go to the health department every day to take my pills under the observation of a nurse. This is basically the same treatment that has been used for decades. TB drugs are not an attractive commercial market and companies haven't been investing in developing a faster therapy, or one with fewer side effects.

I was quarantined in my home for six weeks before the nurses could verify that I wasn't contagious. After a week of being released, there was a questionable test result, and back I went into quarantine for another four weeks. Even with all of the technology that connects us, the isolation was incredibly difficult. On top of it, I carried this guilt about having possibly exposed someone to TB before I knew I had it.

I was hesitant to talk about having TB. I didn't want to scare people, but also didn't have the energy to worry about their fear, and to educate people about what risks are real and what are not.

TB is contagious, but less contagious than the flu or other contagious diseases.

I'm beginning to find ways to tell my TB story, because I think the field needs more advocates. Many TB patients fear stigma, or just want to leave this ordeal behind them. I've had both of those feelings in spades. But I also want to advocate for the appropriate resources to be invested in TB prevention and treatment. More investment in diagnostics and treatments are needed to reduce the spread of TB, and especially of drug-resistant TB.

TB is still an issue right here in the US. It's an even bigger in developing countries, where healthcare systems face acute resource shortages, where taking a daily regimen of pills can require walking hours to a health center. As difficult as my experience was, I'm grateful that the public health department here had the pills I needed, that there were caring nurses available regularly to support me.

My father recuperated in Valley Forge from suspected tuberculosis after his medical corps military service in Japan. The story only came up when I needed a Kindergarten nap time rug. I was given the red rug with a black Scotty at its center my father, now a doctor,
had hooked during his confinement. It always struck me as odd that a man would hook a rug, but I was too young to understand treatments available for serious illness before the discovery of antibiotics.

This scenario revisited my family a few years later when my mother, a retired registered nurse, was diagnosed with a hole in her lung the size of a quarter from TB. "Huber the Tuber" is what my mother named her invading bacteria. She was installed at The Glenridge TB Sanitarium in the Albany, NY area, where she spent six months recovering, most of my fifth grade year. When my mother told me one night as I lay in bed that she had to go away, I remember asking her if she was going to die.

I was the eldest of four children, and we experienced a merry-go-round of "odd duck" live-in sitters. I had to give up my bedroom and sleep with my father in my mother's twin bed so the sitters had a place to stay. Our world was turned upside down. My baby sister was not quite two at the time.

Back then, there was a code of silence about TB. Fortunately for my mother, antibiotics were available and she made a full recovery. But the fears from the past meant friends did not visit, and my mother emerged from the experience resentful, mistrustful and bitter.

As worry about polio had colored my mother's growing up years, now worry about TB overshadowed ours. My youngest brother, my mother's "Plum", tested positive and was put on a course of treatment.

The disease did not reemerge, but its psychological impact infected the family, and there was no cure for that.

I am a 67 year old viet nam vet, and hippie in the 60s, good health all my life and to now have TB its crazy. Any one out there with similar story. I hate the meds I have to take to get well. Thank GOD there is cure now

My maternal grandfather, William Youngling, developed TB in the 1930's, spent time in a sanitarium in upstate NY, and died at home when my mother (who was born in 1936) was 6 years old.

My mother (Jennie; born in 1904) had TB when I was a little girl of around 9 or 10 (born in 1927). We lived South of Mount Vernon Washington. Mother's older sister (Beatrice; who lived in an apartment in Seattle with her husband) took care of her. She had complete bed rest as described in the The American Experience. All her dishes had to be boiled etc. A Dr. Stith (yes, Stith; out of Firlands Sanitarium near Seattle) was her TB doctor; and would come to the apartment to give her air. Actually this took place one time when I was there. This deflated her lung. I lived with my aunt and uncle (my dad's brother) and my cousin during the approximately 18 months she was in Seattle and then confined to bed back home. I remember one time my dad took me to visit her ; and another time when I was with them when she was floroscoped (sp?) at Firlands Sanitarium. That must have been about the time when she had moved back home, cared for by a woman who came in daily to take care of her. She went on to live a long and busy life owning her own bar in Alaska in the Sixties. She died in 1999 in Sedro Woolley Washington where she was born. I kept waiting for a reference to air as part of a cure for TB but there was no mention of it. Neither my father nor I (an only child) ever had TB. Nor did any of her family and she was one of 10. I was prompted to write because I wondered why there was no reference to "air" as part of my mother's cure. That was real, and perhaps unusual,

I worked in a TB lab in the 50's and left in 1959. After the birth of my 3rd child in 1964 I was not feeling well and had lost a lot of weight. I was diagnosed with TB and was removed from my home and family and sent to Nassau Co Sanatorium in NY. It was awful finding homes for my children, 4, 3 and 8 wks. I was treated with PAS and INAH for 6 months there. After I went home and reunited with family some of whom treated me like a pariah, I got stronger all the time. I am now going on 80 and will never forget my terrible time with TB!!!

My grandmother died of consumption in 1926. She left behind my grandfather and five children, a devastating blow for any family. I do not think the children ever recovered, if that is even possible. My father was 8 years old. Had she developed the disease a few years later, there would likely have been antibiotics to help fight the illness and she would not have wasted away in a sanitarium. My father believed that she contracted TB from my great grandfather who would visit Corpus Christi for several months each year and who had developed the disease. Many years later, my grandfather also died of TB due to the administration of the incorrect medication. Although my father never developed TB, he always had a positive reaction to the test and after the last test, which caused a terrible redness and swelling on his arm, his doctor finally stopped giving it to him.

It's not exactly a story about how TB has directly affected my life. I work in Mount Morris, NY at the site of an old TB hospital. The stories are fascinating and what's even more interesting is that there is a 200+ piece art collection of WPA 1930s art that was hung all around the hospital for the enjoyment of the patients! As an art historian, I got involved with the collection and now work at the organization which maintains and researches the collection, Livingston Arts. We have a letter from the director of the New York State TB Hospitals who wrote to the leaders of Federal Art Project One asking for paintings so he could place them on the walls of the hospitals. At the end of the letter Dr. Plunkett says, "If it does nothing else but bring happiness and health to the poor afflicted persons under my care it will have justified its existence." Working here in Mt Morris and with the collection of New Deal art has expanded my horizons and knowledge on a fascinating time in American history.

My maternal grandmother had TB and was in a sanatorium in Louisville, KY for two or three years. She kept a dairy. She finally recovered. My mother and her sister lived with their paternal grandparents while their mother was away. It was a bad memory for my mother.

I was born in 1938. We were given TB tests in public school every year until about 1956 and after that doctors some times gave it. (Form of a bandage that reacted to your skin if you had TB). Yes, TB and polio shaped our lives and our fears back when...........

My father, Charles Brumley, spent the last 27 years of his life in Saranac Lake, and knowing how important history is spear headed the restoration of the lab. Today Historical Saranac Lake is located at the lab. They had a major role in the filming of this documentary, and are a great resource when it comes to the history of the sanitarium. One of my most prize pictures is a picture taken at the lab, of a replica cabinet, that holds a lot of Dr Trudeau's microscopes, that was dedicated in my dad's memory. His memorial service was also held there, and seeing the picture of the lab when it was new brought tears to my eyes.

My father had TB in Britain in I think the late 1950's and spent six months in a sanatorium. He was a student at university then. I think he would not even have told my mother later had she not learned about it from his mother. He could never tolerate any talk of doctors illness or death. My understanding is that TB is not that easy to catch. I have wondered how he got it. He must have been in close contact with someone with an active case, but whom? It's a mystery.

I had TB as a very young child. I remember it some but not much. I don't have it but have been told I will always test positive for it and wonder why. My Mom was really on top of my treatment and was the source of my limited knowledge. But she passed away from cancer several years ago and isn't here to answer my questions. I was young, took it for granted and didn't record much if what she told me. So I watched The Forgotten Plague documentary with great interest-I never knew the history. It's kind of funny because the timeline jumps from '68 to '81 and my experience was in the first half of the '70s. I guess I am a rarity. I get strange reactions from people who learn this about me and do feel like I could identify with being shunned. Some react with fear and for others it is so "out there" nowadays that it makes them laugh.

My great grandmother had TB when she was 20 yrs old. She had given birth to my grandmother in 1899 and then disappears. I have tried to find a death record and cannot find anything about her. I wondered if they kept records of those who died in sanitariums. The census in 1900 shows her living in Chicago with her sister but then the family moved to Berrien Michigan and there is no further record of her. How would a person track down a family member who died of Tuberculosis, possibly in a Michigan sanitarium? My grandmother tells the story of seeing her mother across a room and saying goodbye to her but was not allowed to go near her. We estimate the year to be between 1904 and 1907. It has been the family mystery all these years of where Ossa Means died and where she is buried? when I saw this program it helped to better understand the circumstances of those living with this terrible disease and how it impacted families. there is one other story of her working in Chicago in a sewing factory with others who also had TB. They were locked in all day in the factory and not allowed to leave or go outside.

I never knew my maternal grandfather Jean. He died of TB when my mother was only 13 months old in 1913. Since he had spent most of her young life in a sanitarium at Saranac Lake, NY, she never knew him either. I have many letters he wrote in His beautiful hand, describing his life in the sanitarium mostly about the food, rest, and fresh air, just as described in tonight's American Experience. He apparently seemed to be getting well enough to talk of returning home, but it was not to be. According to my grandmother, who was a nurse, he died unexpectedly as she prepared for his homecoming. My mother suffered most of her life from various lung infections, had bouts of pneumonia as a teen and more serious lung diseases later in life (bronchiectasis and MAI) which compromised her immune system when elderly, even though she lived to 96. Her pulmonary doctors were always interested in her exposure to her father's TB as an infant. I would like research an archive of the sanitarium's patients to see my grandfather's history there.

In 1956 my mother was diagnosed with TB. As a young woman she had worked in an office in her 20s, she had worked in an office. Although my mother never smoked, I can see from pictures that most people who worked there did. She got pleurisy. Perhaps that weakened her lungs.
In her early 50s, she developed TB. An only child, I was 13 at the time. My mother had to go to the TB Sanitarium in Creson, PA, or I would have been removed from the home. She was gone for my entire 9th grade year. My father and I went to see her every other weekend, I was too young to be allowed to visit but I looked older than I was and they did not check. I never tested positive for TB even in the simplest tests.
Some of her friends at the "San" died. My mother had a lung removed but she was able to return home and lived another 20 years.

My great aunt Myrtle Houston was the oldest of three girls who grew up in Davidson, NC. She contracted tuberculous, along with her middle sister, Flossie, who recovered. The photos of her are striking, a beautiful girl and young woman. Myrtle was a painter and one of her water colors was of a scene in the mountains. This painting hung in the living room of our home. I believe she painted it while a patient at Long Sanitorium in the mountains of NC, the same place where she passed way from this dreaded disease in 1922. My maternal grandmother, Myrtle's youngest sister, did not speak of her often but she kept photographs of her which were hung on the living room wall, along with another of Myrtle's paintings. I always wished that I had known her. Whenever I go home or go to Black Mountain, I think of her and the tragedy of a young life lost.

My grandfather's mother spent time in a sanitorium with TB. My great-grandmother never regained her health. My mother's little sister died at 6 years old at Santa Rosa Children's Hospital with what was described in the family as tuberculosis of the brain. I always had the impression that to have someone in the family with TB was an embarrassment or a shameful event. No one talked about them or described the experience. So many things in my grandparent's lives were connected to secrecy and TB was one of those events. I am so glad I was born in a time when life is not denied and personal experience is respected.