A tuberculosis hut or TB hut is a small wooden building that was used, mostly in the early twentieth century, by tuberculosis patients to recover in solitude.
A tuberculosis hut or TB hut is a small wooden building that was used, mostly in the early twentieth century, by tuberculosis patients to recover in solitude.
By the end of the 19th century, one out of four deaths in Europe was related to tuberculosis. The disease was often associated with bad hygiene and air pollution in the cities. As a result of improvements in housing and healthcare in the beginning of the 20th century, there was a downward trend in the number of patients, [1] but there was still no cure. Medical treatment consisted mainly of bedrest, sunlight, fresh air and healthy food. As an alternatives to treatment in a sanatorium, tuberculosis huts were introduced. [2]
In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the houses could be found in groups near hospitals or sanatoria. In the Netherlands, these could also be found near health associations, on farmground just outside the town center or in gardens of individuals. [2] [3] Once a day a nurse visited the patient for medical treatment; the family of the patient took care of the rest. [2] The huts could be bought, borrowed or rented. [3] [4] [2]
In the United States, similar huts were built in Colorado Springs. Where patients in Europe were sent to sanatoria in the Alps, patients in the United States were encouraged to cure in the fresh mountain air of Colorado Springs. Charles Fox Gardiner, a local doctor, decided to avoid any cross-contamination between patients by isolating them in small tents, instead of putting them all in one room. He developed special octahedral huts, that were placed in rows. [1]
Tuberculosis huts existed in various forms, but in general they were simple premanufactured wooden buildings, that could be put together on the spot. [3] They were white or green, with a lot of glass to allow the entering of as much sunlight as possible. On the front side, the houses were either fully open, or they contained large doors that could be opened wide. [4] [2] [1] The huts in Colorado Springs were fixed to one place. The type of huts that was used in British hospitals, could be rotated on turntables towards the sun and out of the wind, to optimise the recovery conditions for the patients. [1] In the Netherlands, both the fixed and the revolving types could be found. [2] [5] [4]
The original purpose of the hut was that the patient could recover by resting in solitude. The patient was supposed to stay in the hut night and day, and this stay could take months or even years. [2] The huts were acquired for other purposes too, like a summerhouse or gazebo. At least the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and sexologist Havelock Ellis are known to have owned a revolving "writing hut". [1] Until the late 1940s tuberculosis patients were often put in tuberculosis huts. [6] With the introduction of effective medication in the 1950s the huts lost their original purpose and started to serve new ones. [2] [7] In 1982 the collection of the Netherlands Open Air Museum was expanded with a tuberculosis hut, as a gift from the National Cross Association. [3] One of the open-air TB huts of Montcalm Sanitarium in Manitou Springs, Colorado was donated to the Miramont Castle museum in 1998. [8] Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden (The Netherlands) owns a hut since 2011 and Open Air Museum Het Hoogeland in Warffum (The Netherlands) owns one since April 2016. [2]
Putten is a municipality and town in the province of Gelderland, Netherlands. It had a population of 24,365 in 2021. It is located in the coastal area of the old Zuiderzee. To the east of Putten lies the Veluwe, the biggest national park of the Netherlands. To the north, east and west, Putten is surrounded by farmlands.
Schagen is a city and municipality in the northwestern Netherlands. It is located between Alkmaar and Den Helder, in the region of West Friesland and the province of North Holland. It received city rights in 1415. In 2013, Schagen merged with the neighbouring municipalities of Zijpe and Harenkarspel, forming a new municipality, also called Schagen. The town hall is located in the main town of Schagen.
The Kröller-Müller Museum is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of her and her husband's former estate, opened in 1938. It has the second-largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, after the Van Gogh Museum. The museum had 380,000 visitors in 2015.
A sanatorium, also sanitarium or sanitorium, is a historic name for a specialised hospital for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments, and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often in a healthy climate, usually in the countryside. The idea of healing was an important reason for the historical wave of establishments of sanatoria, especially at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. One sought, for instance, the healing of consumptives especially tuberculosis or alcoholism, but also of more obscure addictions and longings of hysteria, masturbation, fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Facility operators were often charitable associations, such as the Order of St. John and the newly founded social welfare insurance companies.
Sunshine Way is the name of a crescent-shaped street in Mitcham, England, built in 1936 for families from overcrowded areas of inner London, and including specially-designed houses to suit the needs of tuberculosis (TB) patients.
Tambaram Sanatorium is a southern suburb of Chennai, India. Located between Chromepet and Tambaram, the neighbourhood is served by Tambaram Sanatorium railway station on the Chennai Beach–Villupuram section via Tambaram of the Chennai suburban railway.
Madonna Mary Swan-Abdalla was a Lakota woman. Born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, Madonna Swan prevailed over extreme difficulties including the Native American tuberculosis epidemic of the 20th century to lead a fulfilled life. She overcame the terrible conditions of socio-economic deprivation, restricted education, poor health care, and confinement to the Indian tuberculosis sanatorium and the reservation, to attend college, become a Head Start teacher, marry, raise a child, and be named Native American Woman of the Year. Madonna Swan became an inspiration to both Native and non-Native women.
Marga Minco, for some time known as Marga Faes, was a Dutch journalist and writer, and a Holocaust survivor. She married Dutch poet Bert Voeten.
ESNS is an annual four-day music showcase festival and conference held in January in Groningen, the Netherlands. The first three days of the festival (Eurosonic) feature artists from all over Europe, the last day of the festival (Noorderslag) features only Dutch artists. The conference is held during all four days of the event. Several awards are presented during Eurosonic Noorderslag: the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards, the European Festivals Awards, the Buma Cultuur Pop Award (Popprijs), the Pop Media Award, The Feather, the "Iron Venue and Festival Animals" and the Buma Music Meets Tech Award.
Tuberculosis in India is a major health problem, causing about 220,000 deaths every year. In 2020, the Indian government made statements to eliminate tuberculosis from the country by 2025 through its National TB Elimination Program. Interventions in this program include major investment in health care, providing supplemental nutrition credit through the Nikshay Poshan Yojana, organizing a national epidemiological survey for tuberculosis, and organizing a national campaign to tie together the Indian government and private health infrastructure for the goal of eliminating the disease.
The Indian hospitals were racially segregated hospitals, originally serving as tuberculosis sanatoria but later operating as general hospitals for indigenous peoples in Canada which operated during the 20th century. The hospitals were originally used to isolate Indigenous tuberculosis patients from the general population because of a fear among health officials that "Indian TB" posed a danger to the non-indigenous population. Many of these hospitals were located on Indian reserves, and might also be called reserve hospitals, while others were in nearby towns.
The town of Colorado Springs, Colorado, played an important role in the history of tuberculosis in the era before antituberculosis drugs and vaccines. Tuberculosis management before this era was difficult and often of limited effect. In the 19th century, a movement for tuberculosis treatment in hospital-like facilities called sanatoriums became prominent, especially in Europe and North America. Thus people sought tuberculosis treatment in Colorado Springs because of its dry climate and fresh mountain air. Some people stayed in boarding houses, while others sought the hospital-like facilities of sanatoriums. In the 1880s and 1890s, it is estimated that one-third of the people living in Colorado Springs had tuberculosis. The number of sanatoriums and hospitals increased into the twentieth century. During World War II, medicines were developed that successfully treated tuberculosis and by the late 1940s specialized tuberculosis treatment facilities were no longer needed.
Ethan Allen School for Boys was a reform school in Delafield Town, Wisconsin which operated in a former tuberculosis sanitorium from April 1959 until June 2011, when it was abolished and the inmates moved to Lincoln Hills School in Irma. It was operated by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
The Firland Sanatorium was Seattle's municipal tuberculosis treatment center. It opened on May 2, 1911, and closed on October 30, 1973.
Jansje Gretha (Jans) Schuiringa, also known as Miss Schuiringa, was one of the first people in the Netherlands to hold the title of dentist. The work that Schuiringa carried out between 1920 and 1957 as a professor of prosthetic dentistry at the Institute of Dentistry in Utrecht, was of major significance in the development of the discipline of maxillofacial dental surgery. Maxillofacial dental surgery, which operates on the jaw and the face, involves making prosthetics for the face and teeth.
The Ubica buildings are two adjacent buildings standing at 24 and 26 Ganzenmarkt, in central Utrecht, the Netherlands. Number 24 is a rijksmonument. The first recorded mention of the buildings is from 1319. After centuries of residential use, the buildings were bought by the Ubica mattress company in 1913 and used until a devastating fire in 1989. The buildings were then squatted for 21 years, before being redeveloped into a hotel and café-restaurant in 2014.
Big Brother is the Dutch & Belgian cooperation version of the international reality television franchise Big Brother produced by Endemol. The show aired in Netherlands on RTL5 and in the Flemish Region on VIER/Play4 and has had a total of four seasons. The first season of the show aired in 2021. A fifth season will air in 2025.
Louis Johan Alexander Schoonheyt (1903-1986), commonly known as L. J. A. Schoonheyt, was a Dutch medical doctor, writer, and supporter of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands before World War II. From 1935 to 1936 he was the camp doctor at the Boven-Digoel concentration camp in New Guinea, Dutch East Indies, and is mostly known today for the book he wrote about his experiences there, Boven-Digoel: Het land van communisten en kannibalen (1936). His praise for the conditions in the camp earned him the ire of the internees, Indonesian nationalists, and Dutch human rights advocates; E. du Perron called him a 'colonial bandit', while many internees burned his book after reading it in the camp.