By Dr. Curtis Varnell
James Monroe, Nelson Mandela, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Chopin, Doc Holiday, and Eleanor Roosevelt; what does this diverse group of famous people have in common? They all died from tuberculosis (TB). Tuberculosis was a horrible disease, afflicting without impunity the rich, the poor, the famous, and the unknown. TB is a chronic bacterial infection that affects the lungs but can spread to infect the bone, spine, brain, lymph glands, and other parts of the body. Treatable today, for centuries TB plagued countries across the world and caused innumerable deaths. It is passed from individual to individual through the air by coughing, sneezing, or from spit.
During the early 1900’s, Arkansas had a huge number if infected individuals. Medicine had become more proactive in preventing the spread of disease and states had begun isolating patients in special hospitals that allowed patients fresh air, lots of rest, and some treatment. The main goal was to isolate those with the disease in order to prevent its spread. An 800-acre site just south of Booneville, Arkansas was selected by the state and construction began on the sanitorium. The initial goal was to establish a facility that was virtually self-sufficient and a town itself. The sanatorium grew rapidly, eventually housing up to 5,000 patients at a time. From 1909 until it closed in 1973, more than 70,000 patients passed through the facility. The largest building, the Nyberg building was built in the 1930’s. A monstrous building, it is a tenth of a mile long and its several floors contain more than 140,000 square foot of space.
Across the state, people of all ages identified as having lung complications were sent to the sanitorium. Taking your family to the facility was viewed as a death sentence. Initially more than 70% of those sent never returned. Over the years, the Arkansas sanatorium became one of the best known in the world and reduced that rate to less than a 10% mortality rate.
The real story is a biographical rather than a statistical history. The stories told by survivors relegated to spend months and even years in the facility resound with hurt, fear, and sometimes bitterness. The University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Public broadcast system recorded many of the stories. Many of those recorded were only children when forced into the isolation of the hospital. Initially the treatment involved isolation in individual rooms and total bed care. A journey through the Nyberg building today allows one to experience the coldness and loneliness experienced by patients. The environment is sterile, the walls and building as dark and forbidding as the mental hospital in the Batman series.
It is estimated that more than 50% of the 70,000 or so patients died. The medical staff wished to isolate and prevent patients from knowing about death. One of the survivors describes the horror of death on your floor. Immediately, nurses went down the hall, closing the doors to each room. The hollow building would resound as the doors were slammed, beginning at the end of the hall. The patients would count the door slams and time intervals and figure which door was not closed in the sequence and know which friend had passed. Soon the squeaking sound of the gurney was heard as the attendants collected the body to be delivered downstairs in the cold room.
Days and months would pass in complete boredom. Richard Myers, one of the survivors was asked what life was like, “Every day was a Tuesday, he replied. “Tuesday because nothing ever happens on Tuesdays.” One of the ladies described the joy of a nurse bringing them hamburgers brought from Booneville. Treatment was sometimes painful. One method involved pulling the arm upward, deflating the lung, and placing ping-pong balls into the chest thereby collapsing the
lung to allow it rest. Many of the methods of treatment were experimental but successful and the facility became known as one of the best TB sanitoriums in the world.
The TB sanitorium was closed in 1973. Many of the buildings still stand and the facility today serves as a state mental hospital. There are so many stories to tell about the facility, including modern day ghost stories. Each visit, I hear the whispers of those stories in my mind as I walk the hall and remember the horrors of a disease man is now able to contain and cure. For a more complete story, go to Sanatorium Hill https://www.pbs.org/video/sanatorium-hill-kkf1gw/
