I was doing some family history research and I came across a person who died of TB at 55 in 1954 (central South Carolina). Now, we’ll never know factually if that was the correct diagnosis, but my questions:
Would a small town hospital give an accurate TB diagnosis, or might they just say TB generically for someone with a chronic lung condition, as the person had been a textile mill worker.
I know back in the ‘old days,’ it was thought that sending people to dry climates would mitigate the symptoms, but aside from that was there effective treatment for TB in the 1950s?
Antibiotics for TB were developed in the 1940s, so by the 50s I think treatment was straightforward. Diagnosis can be tricky since TB can affect organs other than lungs, though
Treatment with antibiotics became increasingly more common (and effective) in the 1950s, but Sanatoriums still existed. I had an aunt who worked at one for a couple of years in the early ‘50s. It was in the mountains of Western Maryland (probably, but PA or WV are possible). That wasn’t a dry climate, though, so I think it was more of a "fresh air’ treatment. If my aunt can be believed they kept the windows open even in the winter.
TB was a common disease in the U.S. back then, so it’s likely they diagnosed it correctly.
It takes a long course of antibiotics to treat TB. The infection grows slowly, but it also dies slowly. It can take six months to get rid of it.
Could it be that your relative’s lungs were already damaged by work in the textile mill, in addition to the TB? That could have hastened the death.
I just finished reading the book “Everything Is Tuberculosis” by John Green, about the history of the disease and its treatment. It’s a short book, and I found it very interesting.
I just read it the other day, and I agree. It’s written for a lay audience, gives a ton of historical background on the early attempts to diagnose and treat it, along with the effectiveness of those attempts. I’d recommend it for @Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker any anyone interested in the topic.
Though if I were writing something similar, I’d have written “Everything is TB or Syphilis”, as those two chronic disease causing organisms can infect nearly any part of the body and cause nearly every sign or symptom. .
Anecdote: Both my parents had TB in the 50s. In fact they met in the sanatorium. Never heard much about antibiotics, but the both had major surgery - my mother had a full pneumonectomy and my father had a partial. They used joke about having two and a half lungs between them.
So:
TB sanatoriums were still a thing in the 1950s. By that time it seemed more for isolating the patients from the general population to control spread. My parent’s sanatorium was not in a dry climate, it was in the countryside near where they lived.
Antibiotic treatment was still in its infancy. Surgery was not uncommon. Antibiotic treatment got better as the decade progressed.
Isoniazid (INH) was developed as an anti-tubercular in the late 40s/early 50s. It doesn’t work as well along as when combined with one of a few other drugs, the first being Rifampin, from the mid-1960s. I’m pleased that I was treated for exposure with this combination in the 1980s before lots of TB strains became resistant to these medications. I will say that at times it wasn’t a plasant treatment, but a lot better than having a lung removed.
Tuberculin skin testing and sputum testing for acid-fast organisms were common diagnostic modalities long before the '50s. Chest x-rays showing characteristic lesions also existed to go along with clinical features in making the diagnosis.
TB seemed to run in my father’s family, and he had it twice, the first time when he came back from being a POW in Germany, and again in the early 1960s. I don’t know what treatment he’d have got in a military hospital in 1945, but the second time, he was in one of the leading specialist hospitals in London, and quite a long time in a sanatorium/convalescent hospital in the country. I believe streptomycin was involved (he certainly joked about the number of injections he had in his backside). I was given the BCG vaccination, several years before my contemporaries.
For an interesting account of the history of TB I recommend John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis. It is the same John Green who has written several young adult books that became movies. So very readable.