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A sanatorium is an institution chieflv for the openair
treatment or hygienic treatment, of consumption
—a place where the patients enjoy the best natural
conditions (i.e., sunlight and fresh air), together with
proper and suitable food, clothing, rest and graduated
exercise. Tuberculin injections, or inoculations, would
be used as required, at the sanatorium, under medical
advice. Such lines of treatment are of the greatest
value in connection with early cases of consumption,
but, whilst such treatment may also benefit somewhat
the advanced cases, the results are not anything like
as satisfactory and there is the obvious drawback to
"early" and "advanced" cases being treated together
in the same institution.
Further, another value of the sanatorium is the
educational one, more especially to the patients themselves,
showing them how disease can be prevented
by simple means—not only prevented from infecting
other persons, but also prevented from re-infecting the
patients themselves.
The early cases of consumption are practically the only
suitable ones for sanatorium treatment, and other institutions
(e.g., hospitals and infirmaries) connected
with, and affiliated to, the sanatoria, are consequently
necessary for dealing with the advanced cases, which
are unsuitable in the majority of instances for open-air
treatment, but which would derive benefit from a
treatment based upon the same principles of proper
and suitable food, clothing, rest, and graduated exercise,
etc. The existing hospitals and infirmaries are
best suited for the treatment of these advanced cases.
No curative treatment has, at present, been found for
dealing with these advanced cases, which pass on from
bad to worse until death; but such advanced cases
must be carefully segregated, as they are the most
infectious to others living in the same house.
It becomes necessary, therefore, that measures should
be adopted whereby consumptive patients can be
classified and suitable cases sent to the sanatoria for
sanatorium-treatment and suitable cases sent to
the hospitals or infirmaries for hospital and infirmarytreatment.
To make such measures successful, a
Tuberculosis Dispensary is necessary, an institution.