Looking for Mabel Normand

 

There are a number of aspects of Mabel Normand’s life which are a mystery to me; one is the whole Tuberculosis thing. I have not found when she first became ill and to be perfectly frank, I know very little about TB.

 

What is Tuberculosis?

by Marilyn Slater

July 17, 2009

Tuberculosis, Mycobacterium bovis spread from cows to humans perhaps 10,000 years ago as there are signs of TB scars in Egyptian mummies.  Greeks named the disease phthisis because of its characteristic wasting.

 

It is a slow growing infection which usually attacks the lungs and is passed by particles exhaled from the lungs; it can however infect other organs like eyes, lymph system, bones and etc.

Consumption (tuberculosis) was the leading cause of death in London in 1629. It was called the “white plague”; Louis Pasteur didn’t develop his theory of TB germs until 1862.  It had been back in 1854 that Hermann Brehmer, a Silesian botany student suffering from TB, was instructed by his doctor to seek out a healthier climate. He traveled to the Himalaya Mountains where he could pursue his botanical studies while trying to rid himself of the disease. He returned home cured and began to study medicine. He presented his doctoral dissertation: Tuberculosis is a Curable Disease. In the same year, he built an institution in Gorbersdorf where, in the midst of fir trees, and with good nutrition, patients were exposed on their balconies to continuous fresh air. This became the blueprint for the subsequent development of sanatoria, a weapon in the battle against TB. It was in 1859 that the sanatorium was established in Silesia Germany;

 

It was not until 1864 that Boston prohibited the use of milk from diseased cows far too late for many children.  It was believed that blood transfusions was a valid treatment and folk lore connected TB to ‘vampirism’ well into the 20^th century as people with TB often have symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin, extremely low body heat, a weak heart and coughing blood, suggesting the idea that the only way for the afflicted to replenish this loss of blood.

Mabel Normand was born in 1893 just 10 years after Robert Koch announced that 1/7 of population of the world would die of TB.  It was Koch that discovered that TB was a bacteria and not a hereditary disease.  By 1913, 12% of the deaths in Washington State were from TB, there was no cure or known form of prevention.  In 1927 there were 33 medical journals devoted exclusively to tuberculosis.

Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau was one of the pioneers in the sanatorium movement in the United States around 1906, this was the only ‘treatment’ which was no treatment just isolation. The measures available were very modest. Improving social and sanitary conditions and ensuring adequate nutrition were all that could be done to strengthen the body's defenses against the TB bacillus. Sanatoriums were found in Europe and the United States, provided a dual function: they isolated the sick, the source of infection, from the general population, while the enforced rest, together with a proper diet and the well-regulated hospital life assisted the healing processes.

 

The American Lung Association over the next 20 years published articles on TB and development of public awareness.  The campaign succeeded in reducing the tuberculosis case rate by over 80%; still without a cure. By 1938 there were more than 700 sanatoriums throughout the U.S., yet the number of patients outnumbered the beds available.

Two years after Mabel’s death, a commission was engaged in researching a serious cure but it wasn’t until 1939 that Dr. Selman Waksman discovered Streptomycin, a cure for TB, in 1944 the isoniazid (para-amino salicylic) was discovered and became an effective treatment.  He received his Nobel Prize in 1952.  It closed the doors on the Sanatorium across the country.

 

 

References:

TIMEBOMB: The Global Epidemic of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Reichman, Lee B., MD, MPH;

Tuberculosis in Early Washington: Crisis and Christmas Seals. Wilbur Hallet

Division of Communicable Diseases, Mathew Sarrel,

Tuberculosis Control Program, New Jersey

NJMS National Tuberculosis Center. © 1996

eMedicine http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/230802-overview 

 

 

THE HEALTH HUNTERS

OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

By

Delores Hanney

      In the late 1860s American doctors glommed onto the thought form holding that sunshine was a guaranteed cure for practically anything that ailed one, launching, as a result, the entirety of Southern California as one enormous health resort.  Fueled by hope and high-octane optimism, during the final decades of the nineteenth century the sickly swarmed to SoCal like clouds of honeybees to a poppy field.

     Many of this mass migration of the medically impaired were so close to dead upon their arrival that the word “alive” scarcely pertained and SoCal’s sunny salubrity was able to offer no benefit, though a healthy funeral industry boom was kicked off. 

     The earliest health hunters found accommodations a few stars less than funky -- in terms of both hygiene and comfort – when they were able to find them at all, fortuitously inspiring some of the poorly to embrace a camping-out lifestyle with its attendant wholesome activity and closeness to nature.   In 1870 newly American Southern California was -- for the most part -- merely a modestly civilized outpost at the extreme dusty edge of the unsettled west, devoid of luxury and short on amenities, to say nothing of adequate housing.  But the warmness of the weather, particularly in winter, was a sweet benevolent balm to both body and spirit, converting battalions of the unhealthy into boosters and boasters hyperbolicating their brains out with manic sincerity and crusading revivalists zeal.  The arrival of the transcontinental railroads in the late 1870s further persuaded the health seeker on his desperate trek to the west. 

     Medical climatology was barely beyond the science fiction stage but Santa Barbara, San Diego and even San Bernardino were quickly identified as especially efficacious in fostering higher levels of wellness for the tubercular and the arthritic, but Los Angeles was deemed most salubrious of all.  Perhaps it just had better boosters.  Owing to the divergent topography climactic conditions in SoCal modify and adjust, sometimes erratically, even within a single county. 

     The enhancing economic influence of the infirm on Southern California significantly exceeded their numbers.  As observed by L.A. historian John W. Caughey, “A person was a health seeker only briefly and then became a corpse or a cure.”  Legions of those who regained their vigor stuck around to bring their not irrelevant talents to bear on the development of the SoCal milieu having taken a fancy to the scene.

     Some of the invalids-turned-civic fathers included Abbot Kinney, developer of Venice-of-America; Harry Chandler who became the editor of the Los Angeles Times; Charles Frederick Holder, initiator of the Tournament of Roses, sport fishing and Catalina’s Tuna Club; Thaddeus Lowe, builder of the Pasadena opera house, the Mt. Lowe railway and its various attractions; James P. Widney, founder of the University of Southern California; Frank Wiggins, the muscle and the magic behind the L.A. Chamber of Commerce; and Charles Fletcher Lummis, a writer, an editor and the founder of the Landmarks Club to restore the California missions, the Sequoya League to assist Native Americans, and the Southwest Society which morphed into the outstanding Southwest Museum.

     By 1890 – in addition to a regrettable multitude of quacks – Los Angeles had one doctor for every 200 residents, more than any other place on the planet.  A lot of them initially came as healing-climate chasers themselves. At the dawn of the twentieth century the unwell had worn their welcome.  With one out of six deaths due to tuberculosis causing a mushroom cloud of phobic attitudes towards the diseased and giving Southern California a bad rep, boosters deleted invalids as a focus of their allurement efforts.

     But in their day SoCal’s health seeking, consumerist invalids became a class to cater to, evidenced not least of all in the modifications they aroused in residential architecture, like sleeping porches, larger windows and cross ventilation.

     Sanitariums broke into blossom about the SoCal landscape in the 1880s.  Some were appurtenances to general hospitals, one belonged to the Sisters of Charity, Sawtelle was a federally run veterans home out by Santa Monica.  The majority, however, were examples of private enterprise in action. These ran the gamut from flimsy to first rate, wherein guests enjoyed posh rooms or suites, well-trained staffs, edgy medical treatments, health food diets, exercise programs, massage, tally-ho tours to the seashore and mineral baths and uplifting sessions of “scientific vital breathing – not so much different from some of today’s tony health spas.