Sanitorium, Feb. 25—One thousand thirty-six former patients now living and working is the record of the North Carolina Sanatorium for its patients discharged from the Sanatorium during the past 10 years. There are also 303 living and not working. Eighty-nine per cent of all the early stage cases treated in the past 10 years are living and 80 per cent are living and working.
“We claim,” Dr. P.P. McCain, superintendent of the North Carolina Sanatorium, said, “to have the most complete records of our discharged cases of any sanatorium in the United States. We have not completed our survey for 1924, but previous to December 31, 1923, we had lost track of only 56 out of all the patients discharged form the Sanatorium.
“If we estimate the value of a life at the low figure of $5,000, these cases who have been restored to health and to useful citizenship are worth more than $5 million to North Carolina. Outside of their money value, the patients who have gone out from the institution have been a great health educational factor in the State, missionaries carrying the gospel of early diagnosis and prevention of tuberculosis to cities, villages and farms throughout the whole state. Our ex-patients are instrumental in discovering a large percentage of the patients sent to us in the curable stage. They have learned the symptoms of tuberculosis; they know the necessity of an early diagnosis if a cure is to be effected, and their own experience has made them want to help the other fellow.
“As a means of prevention the value of the institution in these discharged cases cannot be estimated. Ot only has the life of the person infected with the disease been saved, but many persons have been kept free from the risk of infection and probable death by removing the tuberculosis persons from among the healthy citizens of the community. Treatment by segregation removes the risk of infection, and knowledge of how to prevent infection by precautionary measures lessens the risk of infection to others when they leave the institution.
“The extent to which the institution has been successful in the prevention of the great white plague is shown by the steadily declining death rate. Ten years ago there were more than 5,000 yearly deaths from tuberculosis. In 1923 there were only 2,510. Tuberculosis exacts its toll from those in the prime of life. Is it not worth while to save 2,500 of our most useful citizens every year?”
From the front page of The Danbury Reporter, March 4, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068291/1925-03-04/ed-1/seq-1/
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