News

San Haven's history in saving lives with TB at the state's sanatorium

By Scott Wagar

11/20/2012

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 staff of San Haven.


When it came to caring for the patients with tuberculosis at San Haven, physicians and nurses played an important role at the sanatorium and often placed their lives in danger treating the patients with the deadly disease.

Physicians at San Haven held strict duties while on the job. During the Great Depression, it was noted in the Biennial Report of the Superintendent of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Sanatorium ending June 30, 1936, that on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday mornings were surgical days for the physicians who conducted surgical procedures on the patients’ lungs so that the lungs could rest and not spread the TB in their lungs.

The report also stated that on Tuesday and Friday mornings the doctors of the San attended to patients who had treatments done to them, while Thursday afternoons the doctors read, interpreted and dictated x-rays that were taken of patients outside the sanatorium who were referred to the medical facility.

On Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings, the physicians would volunteer their time to see people from around the state and performed mantouxs (a skin test for TB) and x-rays for diagnostic purposes.

When it came to nurses at San Haven, their duties to the patients were numerous.    

A normal day for the nurses in San Haven were to conduct a variety of tasks, some of which included taking patients’ vitals, giving medication, charting, changing their bedding, emptying sputum bags that patients would cough and spit in from their TB and caring for the patients personal needs.

One of the personal needs the nurses cared for in the winter months at the San was to keep the patients’ warm during their open air treatments, which meant having the windows of sanatorium open 24 hours a day so that outside air could circulate through the rooms.

In order to keep the patients’ warm, nurses provided patients with hot water bottles along with half a dozen or more blankets for each patient. When it came to the water bottles, the Biennial Report of the Superintendent of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Sanatorium ending June 30, 1932 stated that on an average night in the 1930s nurses would go through 55 water barrels of hot water to provide the patients warmth in the cold nights that some times dipped to minus 40 below outside. Eventually, water bottles would be replaced with electric blankets for the patients.

The sanatorium also educated nurses. On Jan. 1, 1922, a one year nursing training school was opened at San Haven to train nurses on tuberculosis care, which brought nurses from a diverse number of places to be trained.

In the beginning at San Haven, nurses cared for patients without any protection for themselves, which often placed nurses in a dangerous position of contacting TB.

As researchers learned more about TB and how it was spread, gowning and masking was introduced to the San which protected the nurses from the patients’ TB and the patients from the nurses who brought any infectious diseases into the sanatorium.

According to Bottineau resident, Lorraine Millang, who worked in San Haven’s laboratory as a young adult and participated in the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s Oral History Project on San Haven in 1996, gown and masking was no easy task for the nurses and all the staff members of the San. Upon entering San Haven, the nurses and other employees would have to shower, dress in their uniforms and then gown and mask themselves before going to work in the sanatorium.
After their shifts were over, they would remove their gowns and masks, their uniforms and would shower again before leaving the medical facility. (It should be noted here, Millang also stated in her oral history that all staff members who came on the patients’ floors at the San had to gown and masks. Depending on the type of work one did at the sanatorium, staff members at times would have to double gown (kitchen employees bringing food to the patients) or triple gown themselves (lab technicians working in the labs).

The nurses were also the largest staff at the sanatorium. In order to accommodate all the nurses at the San, the state constructed a Nursing Home in 1930 to house all the nurses and some of the female employees at the San Haven.

Unfortunately, the first and only murder to take place at San Haven happened within the nurses’ building. The structure was located on the west side of the San near a grove of trees that surrounded the sanatorium. One nurse, who mistakenly forgot to shut her windows shades one evening, was observed by a man from the Turtle Mountains who noticed she was alone. He slipped into the building through a basement window, then into her room where he raped and murdered her before escaping out of her window.

The man, who wore a unique and different cap, dropped his hat at the window as he made his escape, which was discovered by the local authorities. He was arrested, charged, found guilty of his crimes and was sentenced to the state penitentiary.

Physician and nurses (and all staff members) at San Haven had to deal with acquiring TB while working at the sanatorium, of which some of the staff members were diagnosed and had to become patients within the medical facility.

However, these physicians and nurses, in their duties and oaths and medical providers, placed their own safety aside to treat patients with TB in the state. Of the entire medical personal in the history of North Dakota, the physicians and nurses who worked at the San can be considered the bravest and most self-sacrificing physicians and nurses in the state amongst one of the most contagious diseases to ever enter into North Dakota.