Tuberculosis Survival

[FredPuli43]

Further to Barmaid's question on lung congestion:
What was the survival rate for patients with tuberculosis pre-1950 ? Papworth Hospital was a TB hospital outside what was then a remote village in Cambridgeshire, suggesting that patients were kept isolated because TB was highly contagious and much feared for its incidence of fatality. (It's now famous for heart transplants). I'm guessing that the death rate was high

[Sqad]

Pre-1950...the death rate was very high.....probably around 90%, then came P.A S (para-amino salycilic acid) and INAH (Iso nicotinic acid hydrozide which reduced the death rate and then came Streptomycin which really brought the death rate down.

Pre.1950, patients died mainly of the results of surgery....Thoracoplasty and lobectomy, which were almost a death sentence pre-1950.

[sunny-dave]

Prior to Penicillin the only 'cure' for TB was fresh air and palliative nursing. Isolating patients from society was a necessary move to reduce contagion as you say. Survival rates were not good ....

The worrying thing is that, because of the widespread misuse of antibiotics, we have moved beyond 'multi-drug resistant' TB (which was just about controllable with the last ditch antibiotic Vancomycin) to 'totally drug resistant' TB - which cannot be cured, so we are back to isolation nursing and palliative care for the few poor souls who contract it. Just pray that it doesn't escape into the general population of a big city ...

[sunny-dave]

I bow to sqad's more detailed formulary - I was using 'Penicillin' as shorthand for the first generation of antibiotics.

[Barmaid]

In 1947 my late father in law was hospitalised with TB. He recovered, but it left him with a weakness thereafter which blighted him for the rest of his life.

[redman41]

My Mother died of TB in 1946 having been exposed to it working as a Staff Nurse at a TB Sanitorium.
I had TB myself (Both Lungs)when I was 15yrs and spent 12 Months in the same Sanitorium as my Mother nursed at. Was treated with the Drugs that Sqad mentions and was fortunately cured.

[Sqad]

Odd thing about TB in the pre-1950's....as Fred has said that there was a village at Papworth for TB patients and sanitaria were set up all over the country, but song how infectious it was, visiting was unrestricted........odd? Any ideas?
As Fred has mentioned......Terrence English made Papworth famous as a Cardio- Thoracic centre.

[chrissa1]

My late father had it in the 50's. he was hospitalised for about 3-6 months at a place called Woolie Sanitarium just outside Hexham in Northumberland. He survived it with no further ill effects. I was the only one in our family who caught it and I can still remember the foul taste of Streptomycin to this day. It cured me too though.

[Sqad]

chrissa...Streptomycin was given by mouth, not injection.......I think that you were describing liquid P.A.S which was the worst taste imaginable as we had to taste it as medical students.

[craft1948]

The TB cases in York were treated at Yearsley Bridge Fever Hospital where the patients were wheeled out on to big cast iron verandahs.
A large number of my Shetlander ancestors appear to have died of TB.

[chrissa1]

Isn't that what I said Sqad? I remember large white capsules, from which my mother used to tip out a white powder and mix it with water. Then a gulp of Ribena. I can't stand that now either.

[ladyalex]

My late father in law had TB , or as he preferred to call it, a 'spot on his lung' ,when lordalex was a youngster. His abiding memory is of going with his Dad to the chemist to pick up his prescription and his Dad asking for it in a different flavour 'this time', only to discover when he got the powder home that every one tasted as foul as every other one. He soldiered on, though, and made a complete recovery. This must have been in the late fifties/early sixties. He didn't have any time off work, though his colleagues were not all that keen to get close to him.
I can also remember my own parents talking about what TB was like in the 1920s and 30s . They said it wiped out whole families of children in their teens, one after the other.
My mother's brother died of it and one of her sisters only just survived by living long enough for the appropriate drugs to become available. Dreadful days.
Here's hoping that the resistant strains do not take hold.

[Ann]

We had a huge open air sanitorium here in Leicestershire at Markfield, my boss at work went there in 1964, then when she had recovered they sent her to convalesce in .......wait for it .......Bermuda! as her friend and her husband lived there in the forces. I remember her telling me the NHS had paid her fare.