When I moved north two years ago, I knew it would be good for my writing career. It’s quiet here, with few distractions and heart-stopping natural beauty. I’ve reworked my novel-in-progress, Seeds of the Pomegranate, and completed a second round of revisions on this new draft.
I’ve also gotten involved with the Saranac Lake Historical Society, which stewards the Trudeau Sanatorium, the first open-air tuberculosis treatment center in the United States. As part of my work, I’ve been cataloguing medical texts devoted to the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis.
The protagonist in my novel, Mimi Inglese, born in 1890 in Western Sicily, contracts tuberculosis as a young woman. I’ve been reading with great interest the kind of medical treatments she would have had access to, including the artificial pneumothorax, a surgical procedure that causes the lung to collapse so it can heal, or “rest.”
Here are some fascinating photos from a 1930s sanatorium in Austria cataloguing the procedure. First, pinpointing the damaged section of the lung with X-ray; second, puncturing the lung; third, using air (later nitrous oxide) to aid in collapse. \
To be honest, I laughed when I first saw them, especially those goggles and the big container of Luft (Air)/nitrogen being “poured” into the lung.
From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2817336/.
