Sanatorium, N.C., Aug. 15 (AP)—Sixteen patients, all suffering from tuberculosis and some of them bedridden, have been requested to leave the State Sanatorium here for the treatment of the disease by September 1st if possible and if not then, at the earliest possible date afterward. Within the next 5 or 6 months, 18 to 20 other patients in a similar condition will be served with the notices to leave. This policy, adopted by the Board of Trustees because of the lack of necessary buildings, beds and maintenance funds, was ordered put into effect within two months by a meeting of the Board held here on July 7. Specifically, the Board decided that all patients who had been at the institution 198 months or longer must be required to leave in order to make room for other patients.
The 36 patients who will be affected by the policy during the next five months will go to various parts of the State. Those who have families and friends to pay for their support will go to private sanatoriums, those with homes but without funds to afford private sanatoriums will return to their homes, those without funds or homes will be returned to their home counties where they will be placed in the county homes if the counties have no tubercular institutions in which to treat them. Some of these patients are bedridden, some of them are able to be ab out for a limited time each day; practically all of them have tuberculosis in a stage of development which presents little hope of a cure. Death, with good treatment, may not summon them for years; death, without good treatment may visit them within a short period. In practically every case the disease has made such progress that a total cure is regarded as close to impossible. All of them to live must have rest—by far the greatest factors if not the greatest in the treatment of the White Plague.
“The feeling of the Board,” asserted Dr. P.P. McCain, superintendent of the institution speaking for the Board of Trustees, “is one of extreme regret that any such ruling became necessary but, in the face of conditions, it was felt to be the best course when the good of all was considered.”
The institution is crowded to its fullest capacity, stated Dr. McCain. The institution has room for 300 tubercular patients and a waiting list at the present time of 133, all of whom have the disease in its earliest stages and who might be restored t usefulness if taken into the institution at once. Under present conditions it is three months after a person with the disease applies for admission before he or she can be admitted and three months within the institution may be the necessary time to save a life, while out of it the disease may have developed to such a state that the case becomes a most serious one; sometimes impossible to cure.
When the 1925 legislature met, stated Dr. McCain, the Sanatorium asked for an appropriate for permanent improvements of something over a million dollars to care for about 1,000 cases. Told to trim this request by the legislators in charge, the amount was cut to $480,000 which would have cared for the waiting list as well as all patients now in the hospital. The legislature finally allowed $137,000 which is only sufficient to build a children’s building and a nurse’s home, two additions to the institution which the Board considers to be vitally necessary.
The Sanatorium, continued Dr. McCain, has dining room, kitchen, and all basis units except buildings for beds to care for double its present capacity. Had the appropriation request of $480,000 been allowed the capacity could have been doubled and the children’s ward added. Had the first request been granted, 1,000 cases could have been cared for and this would have only been half of the number of beds Dr. McCain believes the sanitorium should have in view of the number of deaths by tuberculosis each year in the State.
Just across the road from the main building of Sanatorium is a ward for prisoners of the State who have tuberculosis. The Board of Sanatorium has been required to set aside 48 beds for the criminal-tuberculosis cases and also is required to care for these men out of the regular appropriation for maintenance of the institution. No extra funds have been allowed for this purpose and the fact that these beds can not be used for cases coming from the ranks of the citizenry is partly responsible for the crowded conditions now existing which make the new policy necessary.
The plan of the institution, according to its superintendent, is to care for the curable cases. Patients who remain 18 months or longer without responding to the cure generally are classed as advanced cases not always curable. A much shorter time is necessary at the institution in order to establish the progress the disease has made. In arrested cases, patients have left Sanatorium in less than three months and after that long a stay are able to care for themselves and also to protect the public from any menace which might arise from their presence had they not been taught how to care for themselves. That is, they have been taught the proper precautions to take both to protect themselves and their fellow citizens.
“There should be 2,500 beds in the State for the treatment of tuberculosis patients,” declared Dr. McCain in citing some facts concerning the disease and its presence in North Carolina. “There were 2,500 deaths from it last year and there should be one bed for every death. The State has only 848 beds which include a large number of private sanatoriums treating cases from out of the State. We have 300 beds but not all are available as 48 are reserved for prisoners.
“No appropriation for prisoners and we have to take care of them from our regular appropriation.
“The plan of the board is for the institution to care for the curable cases at State expense and have counties care for the more advanced cases.
“We are urging those able to pay to go to private institutions and make room for those unable to pay.
“A case that stays three years takes the room of 12 cases who could be restored to useful capacity and who if kept away would become incurable.”
Mr. McCain stated that the counties pay one dollar a day for those patients sent to Sanatorium who are unable to pay for themselves and those able to pay have a rate of $1.50 a day. Some counties, he added, are now building sanatoriums for tubercular patients, some already have them, and some smaller counties expect to combine and build such institutions. In counties where the State Sanatorium has been caring for the consumptive patients and where there are no county Sanatoriums [TB patients] will have to be cared for to the best of the county’s ability at the county homes.
Of the 16 patients who have been asked to leave by September 1st, three are totally dependent on counties and some are being paid for by relatives or friends in whole or in part.
The patients who will be affected by the order are reported to have mixed feelings on the subject. Some have accepted the ruling as inevitable when the situation the Board finds itself in is explained and are preparing to leave. Others will leave with great regret because they feel they cannot afford the treatment which the State has given at a minimum cost but which will cost a great deal more elsewhere. Others face with dismay the prospect of transfer to county homes were adequate provision has not been made for treatment of the disease. A large number are reported indignant that the institution has been required to turn out law abiding citizens who are playing the $1 or $1.50 a day as the case may be, while tubercular patients from state prison are cared for and free of charge. Touching on this last named group, Dr. McCain expressed the opinion that at State Prison in Raleigh there are buildings where all criminal cases could be cared for releasing the beds at Sanatorium for citizens.
From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, August 15, 1925. Governor Angus Wilton McLean was elected to cut government spending. When he left office in 1929 North Carolina had a surplus of $2.5 million, a cushion that helped the state as the Great Depression set in.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-08-15/ed-1/seq-1/
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