News
San Haven's history in saving lives with TB
Scott Wagar
11/13/2012
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Bottineau Courant is conducting a series which is looking at the history of San Haven, North Dakota’s only state run sanatorium, which was operated in the Turtle Mountains for the majority of the 1900s. This week, the newspaper looks at the children of San Haven who were patients at the sanatorium.
As tuberculosis spread rapidly across North Dakota in the early part of the 1900s, one group from the state was very susceptible in getting TB, the children of the state.
The children of North Dakota afflicted with TB had a special place in the heart of the people of the state and when the sanatorium first opened. Kids were readily accepted into the sanatorium and were housed in the Administration Building with the adults.
The children were given the same treatments as the adults, which included fresh air, rest and well-balanced diet.
One difference for children, unlike most of the adults that were treated, they did not have the opportunity to just rest and be treated or their TB. The kids, like all students in the state, had to continue in their studies.
School for the young students at the San was also quite different than their friends back in their hometowns. Their friends attended school inside, but the kids of San Haven had to attend school in the outside elements due to their fresh-air treatments, even in the wintertime.
Although school wasn’t taught in the first three years at San Haven, in 1915 the North Dakota Anti-Tuberculosis Association raised funds through their Christmas Seal Campaign to open the first Open Air School in the state of North Dakota.
The first schoolroom was located on the west side of the Administration Building and was one of the open air porches, which was used by the patients for fresh-air treatments, sleeping rooms and dressing rooms.
On Jan. 1, 1916, the open air school began with eight students. The student’s instructor was Fred Humphrys who was a patient himself at the sanatorium. He described the school and the regimental routines the children had to follow.
“We did not miss one day of owing to extreme cold weather, and there were several days when the mercury stood at 40 below zero. In wintertime, each pupil is equipped with enough blankets to keep warm, a hot water bottle and a reclining chair,” Humphrys wrote in John Lamont’s Biennial Report of the Superintendent of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Sanatorium for the period ending June 30, 1916. “School commences at 9:30 and continues until 10:30 when lunch is served consisting of hot milk and crackers. We resume studies at 10:45 and proceed until 11:30 when we have dinner. We take rest hour from 12:30 to 3:00 and then proceed with school until 5:00 at which time school is dismissed for the day. The same text books and courses of study are used here as in all North Dakota Public schools.
The sanatorium had no problems finding teachers to teach in the open air school at San Haven because a number of teachers were patients at San Haven. The state in 1906 had so many teachers who were tubercular the State Board of Health stepped in and made an ordinance stating those teachers who were diagnosed with TB could not teach in the public school system.
Throughout the time the San was opened, numerous teaches came to the sanatorium to be treated for TB. Twenty-three school teachers alone were admitted to San Haven between 1934 through 1936.
As new structures were built, additions were added on and patients numbers increased at the San, the students’ classroom was moved to a variety of buildings, one specifically named after the kids of the sanatorium.
In 1927, the sanatorium constructed the Children’s Building, a preventorium at a cost of $65,000. The structure included patient rooms, dining area, treatment rooms and decks for fresh air and sun treatments.
The preventorium was a building for children who were exposed to TB or those who were already diagnosed with the disease. Charles MacLachlin, the administrator of San Haven in 1936, wrote about the Children’s Buildings in the Biennial Report of the Superintendent of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Sanatorium for the period ending June 30, 1936.
“Between the ages of six months to 14 years of age, 73 children were admitted for care to the preventorium of the sanatorium, comprising for the great part those whose fathers and mothers were concurrently under treatment as bed patients in the infirmary as open cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. Seven of the children admitted had no clinical tuberculosis and were discharged after a short observation. Sixty-six were diseased,” MacLachlin wrote. “Here at the sanatorium by provision of the right surroundings with regular rest hours, nourishing food, including goats milk and vegetables, sunlight on porches and artificial light administrator under the group plan indoors and open air school hours tries to prevent the disease from becoming more serious and to build up the highest resistance possible. Usually within a year, the disease becomes quiescent, the children gain in weight and returned to their homes with their health restored.”
Through the treatments of San Haven, fund raising and educational promotions of the
Anti-Tuberculosis Association of North Dakota and decision made about TB children by the North Dakota State Board of Health the number children first admitted to the San decline quickly over the years.
Children in the state were still diagnosed with TB, but the numbers were so small, the Children’s Building eventually closed a preventorium and the young patient of North Dakota were admitted into the Infirmary Building.