Tuberculosis is an ancient disease,going far back into human history.It is said though that it reached it's peak in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,then declined until the later part of the twentieth century when resistant strains began to appear.Mostly it is a disease of the lungs,but other parts of the body can be affected as well.It was also known as consumption,for the fact that one of it's symptoms was weight loss that seemed to consume the body of those infected,seemed to make them waste away.Until quite recently a diagnosis of tuberculosis was a death sentence,though death would often take a long time to claim it's victim.
In addition to the sanatorium at River Glade,Moncton also had a tuberculosis hospital located at the corner of Killiam Drive and Collishaw Street,in some old army buildings.In my day,that building was known as the hospital annex,and it was a low,long,narrow and rather dingy looking wood frame building.In those years no one ever mentioned to me anything about it's housing tuberculosis patients.I learned about that later from a grade six teacher who described it as a terrible,very sad place.But,that is where our mother worked when we first came to Moncton.In those days,some of her family were staying with us.They lived in the western part of the province,at a place called Dead Creek,about 200 miles away.I have memories,though not especially clear ones,of my grandmother being there,as well as my mothers sister Ruby.And,to the best of my recollection,I think it must have been around then that my mothers aunt,Anna English was in Moncton as well.Or,to be more specific,at the sanatorium in River Glade.
Of things like tuberculosis we had no thoughts when we were small.We lived in a world where our mother would not acknowledge any kind of unkindness or impurity.And I suppose it was not a bad place for children to live,at least while they were still children.But it also leaves me with a cloudy sense of family history.While we played happily by day and went to our warm beds with Bible stories for children,there was a whole world just beyond that was never spoken of,even when we were older and had began to ask questions.
Anna English,like my grandparents lived at Dead Creek,just across the road from the Derricks and just down the road,on the same side of the road as my grandparents.*It must have been a hard existence there as the land was not really very good.They were,as far as I know,farmers and lumber men,like my grandfather.My memory of Anna English is of a kindly old lady,rather smallish,and,in fact tiny when I last saw her in the late 1980's.She seemed to get smaller with age,as people do,though on a sub conscious level,it evokes thoughts of consumption.That was likely not the reality of things though.She had a crooked baby finger on one of her hands too.Anna loved children of all kinds,and I loved being around her and her home.she was married to Fred English for more than sixty years.Fred was a very old man even when we were small children.Sometime in the 1960's,they moved into the nearby town of Canterbury,where they lived just past the crest of a hill going out of town toward Skiff Lake.That was at or near a time when most of my mothers family was moving from Dead Creek.Some moved a few miles into town,while others were moving farther away.
Of course the reason for Anna English being in River Glade is that she had contracted tuberculosis.And this is something that I can only conceive of in my imagination,as to what that time must have been like.Dead Creek is nearly 200 miles from River Glade.It could not have been easy to manage a farm without the help of a wife,to say nothing of being separated for a protracted amount of time.The disease itself was still a feared thing in the 1960's and must have taken a toll on her body as well,though neither she,nor anyone else I knew ever talked about that.I also get the sense of sanatoriums that were rather like leper colonies,though that may not have been their intent.There seems to me to have been at least some sense of stigma about them,as they tended to be located in remote places,far from the rest of society,not unlike insane asylums or homes for severely disabled people.Their disappearance also seemed to correspond with a move to deinstitutionalize insane persons and disabled people,though it may have been connected to a decline in tuberculosis rather than in more progressive attitudes that were evolving regarding institutions in general.For Anna English and her family,including my mother,it must have been a very difficult time.
Once or twice I recall being outside the sanatorium in River glade with my mother and my grandmother.We were very small.I recall that there was a big,imposing looking building which we stood beside.There were a number of pipes issuing from the building,and steam issued from one of those pipes.In an upper floor window,near the corner of the building,a woman would appear,and we would wave to her,having no idea of why we were really leaving her at this building.At that time I don't recall much of what the surrounding area looked like.Later,though,we stopped near the sanatorium for a picnic.The building had been closed for some time then and did not seem in the least imposing.In fact I was impressed by its seeming smallness.Nearby,a lovely small stream flows through some trees and I thought what a pastoral,beautiful setting it was.
Meanwhile,at home,we must have been exposed to the possibility of tuberculosis as well.My mother must have been exposed to some extent at work,as well as from the times she visited her aunt in the sanatorium.Later,I remember,we had skin tests and a chest x-ray for tuberculosis,though nothing ever came of it.And still.nobody ever talked of any of those things.
Sources:www.lung.ca/tb/tbhistory
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tuberculosis
www.atlanticcanadahistory.com
In the later part of the eighteen hundreds,tuberculosis had been recognized as being an infectious disease and better treatment protocols had been developed,though anything approximating a cure was still years away.Doctors would collapse an infected persons lungs,presumably one at a time,to allow the infected tissue to heal,a treatment that was to some degree helpful.Another approach to treatment involved dedicating hospital beds to the care of those with tuberculosis and thus sanatoriums were developed to provide treatment specific to tuberculosis.It was also thought that clean, clear air was helpful in treating tuberculosis.Thus,many sanatoriums were located away from major population centers.The first sanatorium in the United States was opened in Saranac Lake,New York in 1885.The first in Canada,located in Muskoka,Ontario followed eleven years later.By the late thirties there were over 60 sanatoriums in Canada,including one in River Glade,New Brunswick,about a half hour's drive from where we lived in Moncton.Conditions within sanatoriums was said to range from resort like,to prison like,where poor people infected with the disease often did not recover.I really have no idea what conditions were like inside the Jordan Sanatorium at River Glade,as my memories of the place are memories of being outside the building.It was closed as a sanatorium in the 1970s.
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| Jordan Sanatorium,River Glade. |
In addition to the sanatorium at River Glade,Moncton also had a tuberculosis hospital located at the corner of Killiam Drive and Collishaw Street,in some old army buildings.In my day,that building was known as the hospital annex,and it was a low,long,narrow and rather dingy looking wood frame building.In those years no one ever mentioned to me anything about it's housing tuberculosis patients.I learned about that later from a grade six teacher who described it as a terrible,very sad place.But,that is where our mother worked when we first came to Moncton.In those days,some of her family were staying with us.They lived in the western part of the province,at a place called Dead Creek,about 200 miles away.I have memories,though not especially clear ones,of my grandmother being there,as well as my mothers sister Ruby.And,to the best of my recollection,I think it must have been around then that my mothers aunt,Anna English was in Moncton as well.Or,to be more specific,at the sanatorium in River Glade.
Of things like tuberculosis we had no thoughts when we were small.We lived in a world where our mother would not acknowledge any kind of unkindness or impurity.And I suppose it was not a bad place for children to live,at least while they were still children.But it also leaves me with a cloudy sense of family history.While we played happily by day and went to our warm beds with Bible stories for children,there was a whole world just beyond that was never spoken of,even when we were older and had began to ask questions.
Anna English,like my grandparents lived at Dead Creek,just across the road from the Derricks and just down the road,on the same side of the road as my grandparents.*It must have been a hard existence there as the land was not really very good.They were,as far as I know,farmers and lumber men,like my grandfather.My memory of Anna English is of a kindly old lady,rather smallish,and,in fact tiny when I last saw her in the late 1980's.She seemed to get smaller with age,as people do,though on a sub conscious level,it evokes thoughts of consumption.That was likely not the reality of things though.She had a crooked baby finger on one of her hands too.Anna loved children of all kinds,and I loved being around her and her home.she was married to Fred English for more than sixty years.Fred was a very old man even when we were small children.Sometime in the 1960's,they moved into the nearby town of Canterbury,where they lived just past the crest of a hill going out of town toward Skiff Lake.That was at or near a time when most of my mothers family was moving from Dead Creek.Some moved a few miles into town,while others were moving farther away.
Of course the reason for Anna English being in River Glade is that she had contracted tuberculosis.And this is something that I can only conceive of in my imagination,as to what that time must have been like.Dead Creek is nearly 200 miles from River Glade.It could not have been easy to manage a farm without the help of a wife,to say nothing of being separated for a protracted amount of time.The disease itself was still a feared thing in the 1960's and must have taken a toll on her body as well,though neither she,nor anyone else I knew ever talked about that.I also get the sense of sanatoriums that were rather like leper colonies,though that may not have been their intent.There seems to me to have been at least some sense of stigma about them,as they tended to be located in remote places,far from the rest of society,not unlike insane asylums or homes for severely disabled people.Their disappearance also seemed to correspond with a move to deinstitutionalize insane persons and disabled people,though it may have been connected to a decline in tuberculosis rather than in more progressive attitudes that were evolving regarding institutions in general.For Anna English and her family,including my mother,it must have been a very difficult time.
Once or twice I recall being outside the sanatorium in River glade with my mother and my grandmother.We were very small.I recall that there was a big,imposing looking building which we stood beside.There were a number of pipes issuing from the building,and steam issued from one of those pipes.In an upper floor window,near the corner of the building,a woman would appear,and we would wave to her,having no idea of why we were really leaving her at this building.At that time I don't recall much of what the surrounding area looked like.Later,though,we stopped near the sanatorium for a picnic.The building had been closed for some time then and did not seem in the least imposing.In fact I was impressed by its seeming smallness.Nearby,a lovely small stream flows through some trees and I thought what a pastoral,beautiful setting it was.
Meanwhile,at home,we must have been exposed to the possibility of tuberculosis as well.My mother must have been exposed to some extent at work,as well as from the times she visited her aunt in the sanatorium.Later,I remember,we had skin tests and a chest x-ray for tuberculosis,though nothing ever came of it.And still.nobody ever talked of any of those things.
Sources:www.lung.ca/tb/tbhistory
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tuberculosis
www.atlanticcanadahistory.com
