Harlan Lounday thought he was seeing ghosts. Patients were sitting under the trees on the lawn of the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Booneville.
"They were there in white wheelchairs, wrapped in white blankets, and they had white handkerchiefs and spittle cups," Lounday shared.
Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium Museum
When: 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday to Friday; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: 256 Carey Road in Booneville
Information: (479) 675-5009
Fast Facts
TB Sanatorium
• “Sanatorium” means “to cure.” “Sanitarium” means “health.” Therefore, “sanatorium” is the best description of the facility and its purpose, said Rachel Silva, historical outreach with the Arkansas Historical Preservation Project.
• Tuberculosis — known as consumption by previous generations because of the way it “consumed” the person until his body could fight of the disease or until death — has had many names over the years: wasting disease, graveyard cough, king’s evil (a form that infects the lymph-nodes) and the white plague (because people with tuberculosis are pale).
• Evidence of the tuberculosis bacteria dates to 1000 B.C., found in the mummified body of the Egyptian Prince Ammon. The Greek physician Hippocrates (460 to 375 B.C.) — widely known as “the father of medicine” — studied a disease called “consumption.”
The word “tuberculosis” was coined in the late 1700s by Frenchman Gaspard Laurent Bayle.
• The architectural influences seen in the buildings on the sanatorium campus include art deco, craftsman and colonial-revival style.
• Cost of treatment for a patient at the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium was about $19 a month in 1928, said Anita Reddig, who prepared her doctoral thesis about the sanatorium. A patient’s family was required to pay half of the fee, and the patient’s county of residence (and proof of residency was required) paid the other half — with some taking jobs at the sanatorium to earn the money.
Before the sanatorium was established, wealthier patients would travel to the western United States in search of a hot, dry climate.
• The Arkansas sanatorium became so overcrowded in the 1930s, the Works Project Association began constructing portable cottages for counties to house and care for their own tuberculosis patients. In 1937, the Wildcat Mountain Sub-Hospital, located about five miles east of Fort Smith, was open as an overflow facility. The facility had been a government camp to house transients, but the government had abandoned it. It was used as a hospital until 1958.
• The Booneville facility accepted only white patients. African-Americans went to the state-run Thomas C. McRae Sanatorium in Alexander — the first institution of its type in the country operated entirely by blacks. When it opened, the survival rate of African-Americans with tuberculosis was only about 25 percent.
• As a patient’s condition improved, he was moved up the hill of the sanatorium grounds to another, less-restrictive, building. For example, the Hamp-Williams Building, a 120-bed dormitory for ambulatory female patients built in 1940.
• The Guinea Pig Piggery at the back of the campus was where patients’ lab tests were run. Researchers would give a patient’s sputum to a guinea pig. “If the guinea pig got sick, the person wasn’t doing so good,” said Rachel Silva of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. “If the guinea pig was OK, you might get to go home.”
• The medical records of patients in the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium are not available to the public. Because the hospital was a state institution, the records are property of the state, but an agency in charge of administration of the records has not been decided. Representatives of the Booneville Historic Preservation Society ofteh asks the legislature to have them declared historical records and opened for research.
However, the Sanatorium Outlook, published monthly, listed the names of arriving and departing patients each month. The Booneville Public Library holds these publications in its collection.
• The Booneville Historic Preservation Society operates a museum in a white frame house, that sits in row with others, built for doctors and their families. On display are medical equipment used at the sanatorium, patient room furnishings, photos and stories from patients, a nurse uniform, information and photos of her and other staff and a variety of artifacts, including a full set of sanatorium postcards from the 1940s and 1950s.
• The sanatorium’s Nyberg Building is supposedly very haunted, Silva’s report says. Jim Biggs, who was born and grew up on the campus of the sanatorium, shared some tales.
“There’s a gray lady that shows up after 4 p.m. when everybody goes home,” he said. “She is a nurse in a 1910 uniform.”
Other reports include girls seen through the windows, and “once in a rare while, kids playing together.”
Biggs said several paranormal groups — including River Valley Paranormal Research and Investigations — have investigated the building. Adrian Scalf, cofounder of the group, referred a reporter to Jeff Gonyea, administrator of the Booneville Human Development Center, which houses and provides vocational training for disabled adults in the buildings of the former sanatorium.
Gonyea stated the sanatorium buildings have never been investigated by paranormal groups.
SOURCES: Arkansas Historic Preservation Program
"Little did I know that, a few hours later, I'd be with them."
Lounday, a 15-year-old from Mountain View, recalled his first day as a patient at the sanatorium during a spring tour of the facility offered by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, in cooperation with the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium Museum.
"It was an excellent facility," Lounday said. "The nurses -- the entire staff -- were compassionate."
Others recall the boredom, loneliness and horrific medical procedures. The narrow, mountainous dirt roads left the sanatorium virtually isolated, and many patients spent years there in treatment.
The state operated the Arkansas sanatorium from 1910 to 1973 on Pott's Ridge -- also known as "The Hill" -- south of Booneville. The 900 acres are green and lush, ideal conditions for the era's treatment of tuberculosis patients.
Initially, treatment before modern drug therapies was based on a strictly regimented schedule of rest, fresh air and rich foods, with some more intense ideas tried, explained Rachel Silva, preservation outreach coordinator for the Historic Preservation Program. The sanatorium concept of mostly private institutions, which blossomed in the second half of the 19th century, was based on the concept of "isolation of the infected from other potential victims."
"The site was perfect for a sanatorium because of its mountainous terrain away from the city, where the air would be fresher, supposedly bringing relief from the disease," Silva said.
The Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium and 68 of its 75 structures were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with "national significance," in 2006.
"'National significance' of a property is difficult to prove, so it is relatively rare," Silva noted. "However, the Arkansas sanatorium was the largest and best facility of the kind in the United States by 1940, and it served as a model for TB treatment facilities in neighboring states -- and even in Italy."
The Arkansas sanatorium was completely self-sufficient, with patient treatment buildings for adults and children, housing for employees and their families, a dairy, water treatment plant, water towers, fire station, laundry, ice plant, bakery, post office and movie theater, Silva listed. Gardens, orchards and vineyards were planted in the open areas around the sanatorium, and the state owned an additional 1,000 acres of land 7 miles away for more cattle.
When the sanatorium was officially closed June 30, 1973, an estimated 70,000 patients had spent time at the facility.
Gifts of health
Arkansas was one of the first southern states to build a sanatorium.
"The Arkansas TB Association was formed in 1908 and immediately pushed for a bill to create a state tuberculosis sanatorium in Arkansas," Silva read from a history she compiled. "The bill was prepared by State Sen. Kie Oldham of Pulaski County, who suffered from TB."
While receiving treatment in Arizona, Oldham met fellow Arkansans Judge Joseph M. Hill from Fort Smith, who had served as chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court until the disease forced his retirement, and Dr. C.P. Meriwether of Little Rock. The Arkansas General Assembly in May 1909 appropriated $50,000 for the establishment of a state sanatorium and $30,000 for two years of maintenance, Silva said. Gov. George Donaghey signed the bill.
Many cities and counties offered to donate land for the sanatorium, in a bid to provide jobs for local residents. State officials rode horseback through the plots to chose the best. "The facility needed about 1,000 acres, and the city of Booneville offered to donate 973 acres -- which the state accepted," Silva said.
"From my research, in Arkansas, there was an outpouring of support from the beginning," said Anita Reddig, a doctoral candidate from Arkansas State University, whose research focused on the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium and the people it touched. "All types of organizations throughout the state supported the sanatorium with donations of cash, in-kind goods and service projects."
The first patient was admitted to the Booneville sanatorium on Aug. 2, 1910, but it was not long before patients were turned away for lack of room in the 88-bed facility, Silva said.
The first patient buildings at the sanatorium were wood frame cottages and several tent houses with low walls and large flaps hinged at the top so they could be propped open to allow air flow through the buildings. Former patients tell stories of waking up with snow on their blankets in winter. A hospital-ward building for patients also was built.
In 1913, the legislature appropriated money to build a 24-bed hospital for the "far advanced cases" from around the state. The hall was named after Oldham, the senator who pushed to establish the sanatorium. He died from tuberculosis in 1911. The building burned and was rebuilt, serving as the principal hospital ward until 1930. Oldham Hall no longer stands.
The state mandated tuberculosis patients report to the sanatoriums through Act 161 of 1955.
"Two Pulaski County health groups demanded yesterday that recalcitrant tuberculosis carries be incarcerated 'when necessary,'" reads a newspaper article dated Feb. 20, 1953, provided by Reddig.
"There are 1,156 recalcitrant carriers in Arkansas," the paper quoted Dr. Woodbridge Morris, chairman of the Pulaski County Health Council. "Actually, they are AWOL from a sanatorium.
"Recalcitrant carriers are infected with a plague," he asserted. "They are infecting and killing more people in Arkansas annually than are automobiles."
No research exists on why patients were reluctant to enter the sanatorium.
"As for why folks hid their disease, I don't know," said Susan Young, outreach coordinator for the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. "But my gut says it's because they didn't want to leave home. Some of them were gone for years. I can't imagine being in the sanatorium for years."
Perhaps, if the infected was the wage-earner, the family would suffer at this removal, so symptoms and testing were kept secret, Reddig said.
Still others were willing to go in a bid to protect their families from the epidemic, she said.
Building booms
Construction projects continued at Booneville for nearly 30 years as the number of patients continued to grow, Silva said.
Sen. Lee Nichols of Booneville and Leo E. Nyberg of Helena pushed passage of the Nichols-Nyberg Act in 1938 to expand the hospital from 640 beds to 1,200. The Public Works Administration also granted funds for construction.
The hallmark of the sanatorium was -- and is -- the six-story, one-half-mile-long Nyberg hospital building, which housed 523 patient beds. Patient rooms were small, with suite-style bathrooms between them, Silva said. The building housed the sanatorium's morgue on the first floor and held a cafeteria and X-ray and lab departments. State prisoners with tuberculosis and recalcitrant patients were housed in cells on the sixth floor.
The building was named for Nyberg, who died of tuberculosis at the sanatorium just four months before the building was dedicated. A plaque honoring him remains in the lobby of the nearly abandoned building.
Only half of the building's second floor is in use today as offices of the Booneville Human Development Center, Silva noted.
"TB did not spare young children," Silva continued. "In 1922, Judge Hill suggested that the Belle Point Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Fort Smith erect a building at the sanatorium for the care of children."
The 24-bed, $57,000 Masonic Building was dedicated in 1924. In addition to a residential space, the building housed a grammar school.
On the 100th anniversary of the Belle Point Lodge, the Masons again gave money to the sanatorium to build a school and recreation building. This is the Masonic Building remaining on the grounds today. The freestanding building originally connected to the first building in an L shape. The site of the first Masonic building now holds a parking lot.
According to Richard Myers, a patient at the sanatorium as a child in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Masonic Building housed infants to children in the eighth grade. First- through fourth-graders went to school in the morning, and fifth- through eighth-graders in the afternoon.
"School mostly consisted of reading or being read to and resembled a baby-sitting service more than an actual classroom," Silva reported.
Today, the remaining wing of the Masonic building is used by clients of the human development center in pre-vocational training programs for developmentally disabled adults, which include weaving and dying rugs from scraps of a sock factory in Georgia. The rugs are sold in the sanatorium's museum and at local craft fairs, with the money going to clients for personal use.
Times Good and Bad
Eighty-five-year-old Farris Brown of Michigan tried to push aside the years and put together details of his time in the Masonic Building. He revisited the sanatorium pushed around the campus in his wheelchair by his daughter. Brown's mother died of tuberculosis when he was 4, and without her care, his health deteriorated. The Paragould boy was admitted to the sanatorium at age 10. "I was never sick (with tuberculosis), but I was dehydrated, slim," he said.
He remembers the diet of raw eggs and milk -- standard fare for patients to counteract the weight loss associated with the disease -- and soon his health returned, and he was released. "I still don't like eggs," he noted.
Brown talked of spending his last night at the sanatorium hiding in a closet with his buddy and giving that buddy his supply of postage stamps. He remembers watching the girls pass the windows of the Masonic Building -- boys and girls were strictly separated most of the time. "The only thing we could do was walk in the yard and spin a top," he said, still sounding bored by the idea.
"I remember coming in a bus with my aunt to the big building," Brown reminisced. "I'd never seen a building this tall in Paragould."
Mary Ann Beshoner of Paris also spent time at the sanatorium. Her father, John Baltz, was a patient from 1943 to 1944. Her mother moved the family from Pocahontas and worked for the sanatorium. Neither 5-year-old Beshoner or her baby brother were sick, but they tested positive for tuberculosis and lived in the Masonic Building. "They wouldn't let a baby on the premises without the germ," she said.
"Mom would visit us kids daily," Beshoner recalled. "We'd run down to the gates (of the building). She worked in the kitchen and would bring us apples and oranges."
Beshoner's father lived on the fifth floor of the Nyberg Building -- where they kept the sickest patients, she believes. And only because his condition was so dire, Beshoner was allowed to visit him -- most children were not allowed to visit. But her father recovered, and the family settled nearby, as did many former patients.
And many couples met their soul mates at the sanatorium, both of them patients, a patient and a caregiver, two visitors and many other possible combinations.
Reddig shared the story of Jim Biggs, a member of the Booneville Historic Preservation Society. He was born and lived on campus, where his mother worked as a cook for 52 years.
"It was really a family up here," Reddig said. "Because there were not many kids at the sanatorium, those that were became everybody's kids."
"It was Utopia. We had run of the place," Biggs said. "Mom didn't have to worry about a 5- or 6-year-old because everybody had a watchful eye."
Biggs later drove a truck for the sanatorium. "I knew every nook and cranny of this place."
"We had suffering and death," Reddig repeated Biggs' words from her interviews. "We had health and healing. We laughed, and we cried. Some were here alone, some here with families. Some to live, some to die; some met here and fell in love. Some left as the only member of their family.
"Their stories were as diverse as the workers, the employees, the patients and the patients' families were," she said.
State of the art
"Tuberculosis was like what cancer is today," Reddig said. "Everyone was touched by it, either directly or indirectly."
Nearly everyone who took the spring tour listed someone they knew who spent time at the sanatorium -- grandparents, parents, neighbors ... A few former patients also joined the group.
The website WebMD describes tuberculosis as "a bacterial infection that can spread through the lymph nodes and bloodstream to any organ in your body. It is most often found in the lungs. In their active state, TB bacteria cause death of tissue in the organs they infect. Active TB disease can be fatal if left untreated."
"Because the bacteria that cause tuberculosis are transmitted through the air, the disease can be contagious," the website continues. "Infection is most likely to occur if you are exposed to someone with TB on a day-to-day basis, such as by living or working in close quarters with someone who has the active disease. But most people who are exposed to TB never develop symptoms because the bacteria can live in an inactive form in the body."
"Early treatments for TB were painful and often harmful for patients, but it was all part of the evolution of modern medicine," Silva said. Many of these treatments -- such as they were -- were pioneered or refined at the Arkansas State TB Sanatorium, which quickly became a model facility copied around the United States and the world.
"Doctors were trying desperately to find a cure for this deadly disease, and any therapy that might provide positive results was touted as the cure-all for TB," Silva said.
Today antibiotics and chemotherapy for drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis -- developed in the mid-20th century -- fight the disease, she said.
"We still don't have a cure for TB," Silva added. "One-third of the world's population is currently infected with the TB bacillus, and 10 percent of those people will develop active TB during their lifetime."
Much improved
The advent of those antibiotics rendered sanatorium treatment virtually obsolete beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, Silva said. Operations at the state's Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium at Booneville were significantly scaled back during the 1960s with an average of only 374 beds occupied during 1965.
"However, the Arkansas sanatorium probably stayed open longer than normal for a combination of different factors, including the high cost of the drugs (when they first came out) and the state's bigger percentage of people at the poverty level -- they couldn't afford any other treatment and had a tendency to contract TB because of a lack of education," Silva said.
A longtime doctor at the facility, a Dr. Jones, opposed closure. "He knew people with tuberculosis didn't always get better," Reddig said. And the improvement depended on patients properly taking all medications, and he didn't think that would happen when patients were out in the community, she added.
"The sanatorium campus was transferred to the Arkansas Department of Health in February 1973, by an act of the Arkansas legislature," Silva concluded.
NAN Our Town on 06/04/2015