My fil, not an immigrant but a long distance lorry driver, had TB in 1954. The 3 drugs to cure it had not long been in use but were effective and after 6 months in Papworth and a year in the local chest hospital he was discharged. A friend in his bay at Papworth died because one of the drugs was in liquid form and vile, the poor man couldn’t keep it down.
My husband was born 3 years later and was tiny. I often wonder if my fil was still recovering when my husband was conceived, although both my in laws smoked which wouldn’t help.
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Very interesting but sad histories, Teresa. I encountered several men who were lorry or bus drivers in the sanatoria I worked in, and am not aware of any research into a possible occupational hazard, although one might speculate about spitting. Many buses and trams in the 49s and 50s had notices saying “No Spitting”, I recall.
And drivers worked very long hours in the cold, closed environment, seated in a position that restricted breathing movements.
Para-aminosalicylic acid (PAS) was one of the first drugs used to treat TB, was in liquid form and tasted extremely unpleasant, but was vitally important to cure the disease. Some patients developed an allergy to it, and had to be desensitised by gradually increasing the strength of very weak dilutions over several weeks or months.
The sanatorium regime also involved enforced rest: most patients resented it deeply, they were not permitted to talk to each other while lying still in bed! Nurses were often very unpopular as they had to ‘enforce’ doctor’s orders! I pioneered the introduction of ambulatory treatment and relaxation of enforced rest in my own sanatorium role, but it met with lots of resistance from the ‘old school’!
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And making a comeback.
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I’m not surprised with the amount of spitting that goes on.
Thank you for all that info, Peter! and Theresa for the post.
Very interesting, after all! I suppose I must have been employed as auxiliary, for the private department, because I remember each patient had his own large room, well kitted out and more deluxe than I had seen before, if a bit austere . It was a shocking experience and stayed in my memory as such, for years, because I never knew what happened to my needy patient, of course.
I might have killed him, by abandoning him.
I was an art student at the time, 1960…,19 yrs old, zero experience. Chelsea A.S was ten minutes biking away. I was Hoping to raise enough dough to pay for my bedsit.
You might even have met or known my boss!? She, a splendid, very impressive lady, put the fear of Satan in me for any errors I might commit.
Tell me, please? What do you think you would have done, in those circumstances? Assuming you could not understand the mans request either? And it was your first ever shift?
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I worked with someone who contracted TB in the 80s. Reading about it years later I’m surprised the rest of us in the office weren’t asked to see our doctors and get tested. Presumably we’d all been immunized so not necessary. He was off work for about 6 months as I recall.
Madame K used to work at Benenden Hospital which was a sanatorium for TB sufferers in the distant past.
Ummm.
BCG is not actually all that effective - 60-80% seems to be the usually quoted figure but there is some controversy over how long the immunity lasts after immunisation.
Random, slightly bizarre, fact - did you know the BCG TB strain is used as a treatment for bladder cancer?
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I had a mate who was the first “male Matron” at Benenden Hospital many moons ago, Chris.
Many youngsters developed a natural acquired immunity to TB as a result of exposure to the bacillus during childhood, but having a robust constitution developed antibodies via mild exposure, plus a simple nutritious diet, lots of fresh air, sunlight, exercise and mucking about getting scratched, grazed, and dirty having fun!
Well, I know some bizarre facts but that’s not one of them!
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BCG is compulsory for little kids. A friend found that out this Summer when enrolling her 3 year old child for Summer “out of school” Activities. 
In the years after the war, the level of children’s natural acquired immunity could be established very simply by a skin test (the “Heaf test”), a very small amount of harmless inactivated tuberculin was injected intradermally into the inner aspect of the forearm. The strength of the child’s immunity was shown by the development of a raised red weal 48 hours after inoculation.
Most children were positive in varying degrees of strength. Children who didn’t show a response were given BCG to stimulate an artificial acquired immune response, and subsequent protection.
But non-responders were rare in the 50s and 60s, and BCG was rarely needed.
I believe that para-aminosalicylic acid (PAS) a medicine given to treat tuberculosis patients also offered some therapeutic benefit to people with non-tuberculosis bladder infections.
@anon78757855 “Tell me, please? What do you think you would have done, in those circumstances? Assuming you could not understand the mans request either? And it was your first ever shift?”
I don’t know, Jeanette. Thinking back to my first ‘exposure’ to a patient’s need, and in the total absence of any prior preparation for a helping role, I think I might have done as you did, withdraw from the challenge.
I first donned a ‘white coat’ as an orderly in a local ‘lunatic asylum’ during my school holidays. I was 17, an unpaid volunteer, and felt both extraordinarily empowered in the institutional role, and overwhelmed by the strangeness and alienation borne of the environment.
I tried to be polite and obedient to everyone, staff and inmates. I called everyone “sir”, through force of habit. I had to shave the lunatics, who submitted without protest, and distribute boots randomly to those who were allowed to walk round the “airing courts” for half an hour each morning. No-one had personal boots, just two from a heap of boots of an approximate size and hastily matched with another random boot to make a pair.
I recall watching with morbid fascination a rather scholarly looking middle aged man squatting naked on the floor of a padded cell, masturbating with gritted teeth and a ferocious snarl on his face, his member raw and bloodied in his fist. No-one took the slightest interest in him, or my watching.
I also made beds and did some washing up. One male charge nurse boxed my ears to teach me manners. He didn’t say in what respect my manners were poor, but he thought I was an over-educated little snot.
I did my best, copied the worst and best of them, conceived a vocation to be a nurse, and began, I suppose, my journey through the several Circles of Hell towards a possible redemption. Don’t we all? 
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I’ve been asked to throw you a name… Mervyn Quinlan.
Doesn’t ring a bell, Chris. I only visited Benenden once at the request of my pal to talk to his ward.sisters but I can’t remember when, lost in the mists of time!
Similar age to you and he carried on long after retirement to look after the hospital museum.
Looked him up on Google, Chris and watched him give a short talk on video. Interesting chap, people like him with a passion for local history and preserving historic records are much to be admired!
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…excellent, Peter…thinking on about all of that…
Reading your reply, Peter, gave insight . I was shattered by complete failure to cope then, and the potential to damage. Working in some kind of medic/therapy role seemed to me to be essential/important. Not vocational. at that time, and a few years later, determined to attempt it all again, was asked to come back (Kings College in Camberwell) when my infant son was a year or so, older, to begin real nursing training. I was accepted at the interview, as if a perfectly OK recruit, just as I had been so readily, in the Brompton. But your tale highlights the kind of disaster I would have been, either incapable of coping at all, or much too involved with nursings darkest experiences to be able to be anything like the essential, calm compassionate observer, that you were, from your own first experience… ‘Boundaries’ having the ability to accept what can and can’t be done for each patient, so each one is as important as the next.