Open Window

The Lake Julia TB Sanatorium, A Community Created by Tuberculosis

De: Pat Nelson

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In the early years of TB sanatoriums, mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents … both the young and the old, the rich and the poor … went away to recover at hospitals ... sometimes for years.

Because fresh air was believed to cure TB, patients slept by open windows, even in winter, sometimes waking to snow and ice on their thick covering of blankets, frozen water in their glasses, and frozen urine in their pots.

Today, while tuberculosis casts its sinister shadow back to earlier times by reemerging in new, drug-resistant forms and infecting one-fourth of the world’s population, Open Window takes you inside the Lake Julia Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Northern Minnesota where the author’s family once lived and worked—a place where a community was created and bound together by a bacterium called the tubercle bacillus.

This collective biography introduces you to the community made up of:
• The determined Dr. Mary Ghostley, who, in the early 1900s, some called a witch for studying medicine
• Dedicated employees like the author’s parents who met and fell in love at the San
•Courageous nurses like Thora Bakken and Wilma Watts, who risked their own health to help others
• Patients, like valedictorian-hopeful Art Holmstrom, who worked hard at doing nothing, hoping their treatment would allow them to return home rather than leaving in a wooden box.

It is not uncommon when you delve into family history to run into the words “consumption,” “tuberculosis,” or the “White Plague.” After reading Open Window, you will have a better understanding of the struggles of those who were stricken with this illness. Open Window’s more than 135 photos make it a visual history as well as a compelling story about the Lake Julia Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Northern Minnesota. Open Window, The Lake Julia TB Sanatorium, a Community Created by Tuberculosis is of interest to anyone who is interested in family history or the history of medicine.

As people quarantined and learned social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic, it became especially interesting to learn that tuberculosis sanatoriums had been created to keep those who were ill away from the general population and that those who lived in crowded spaces were more likely to spread the disease. Covid-19 and tuberculosis are two different illnesses, one caused by a virus and the other by a bacterium, yet there are other similarities such as predominantly attacking the lungs while also being known to attack other parts of the body; being a global threat; and causing hardship to families and businesses.

Well written and thorough dive into TB

If you like history, or had an ancestor with TB, this a great book for you!

You'll learn the history of the San, TB, Dr. Mary (a female doctor in an era where that was unheard of), and follow the life of Art, a young TB patient.

The author interviewed Art before his death. She rifled through correspondences between TB patients, found love letters, and thoroughly dove into the history of the San.

Whether turburculosis has been something that affected your ancestors or not, it's a wonderful account of an era otherwise forgotten.