The Tuberculosis Sanatorium Where Patients Had the Best Time of Their Lives with Ellen Damsky

Dustin Grinnell (00:00:00 --> 00:01:43)
I'm Dustin Grinnell, and this is Curiously.

When you discover your next-door neighbor is a real estate agent, a medium and a psychic, with a doctorate in philosophy, and an all-around hilarious person, you'd be wise to become friends with them. And if you have a podcast, you should invite them on. So that's what I did. In this episode, I talk with Ellen Damski, the most interesting person on our quiet street in the beachside community of Winthrop, Massachusetts. With such an eclectic background, I could have discussed any number of topics with Ellen, but I wanted to focus the conversation on her doctoral work about the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium, established in New York State in the late 1800s by the Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau.

To write her dissertation, Ellen did years of fieldwork that included meetings with many former patients who had gone to the Adirondack Mountains to chase the cure at Trudeau's sanatorium. Despite these patients being ill, plagued by constant fatigue, separated from family and friends, and oftentimes bedridden for long periods of time. Many of them told Ellen that they consider their stay at the Trudeau Sanatorium some of the best times of their lives. One former patient said, "Everyone should go to Saranac Lake to learn how to live." I wanted to understand why many patients felt this way and what it means for all of us. What lessons can be drawn from these patients' experiences, from Trudeau's story, from the sanatorium movement, from the fresh air cure?

Ellen Damski (00:01:44 --> 00:01:45)
Thank you for having me.

Dustin Grinnell (00:01:45 --> 00:02:43)
I wanted to talk to you because you have a very interesting background. You have worked in, uh, different fields, and you've been a real estate agent— you are one now— you've been a tour guide, a recruiter, a teacher. You're also a professional psychic and medium, and you also have a PhD in Philosophy. And during your dissertation, the writing of your dissertation, you studied a very interesting place in northeastern New York, a sanatorium for tuberculosis that started in the late 1800s called the Trudeau Sanatorium. And your thesis was about this place and where people with TB, tuberculosis, went to heal and find what's called the fresh air cure up in the Adirondacks Mountains in Saranac Lake, New York. So, That's why I wanted to talk to you because I read your thesis, all 2,785 pages of it. No, it's— it was a great read.

Ellen Damski (00:02:43 --> 00:02:44)
Thank you.

Dustin Grinnell (00:02:44 --> 00:03:09)
And it came from your work as far as going to Saranac Lake and talking to former patients of the sanatorium and obviously doing research and pulling records and such. So I think that's where I really wanted to focus the conversation, to talk about the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium. And particularly what drew you to the subject? How did you get involved in studying this?

Ellen Damski (00:03:10 --> 00:04:30)
Reluctantly. I mean, I'd like to say that it fascinated me from the beginning, but it didn't at all actually. My father was living at Saranac Lake. He was retired at that point, although he never really retired. But he was very interested in the architecture and also very interested in the idea that there seemed to be this kind of air of optimism.

I believe that's in the preface, which was true that we would sit on the porch and muse. So he said, "You know, this would be a great dissertation topic." And I thought, "Okay, Dad, and there's a guy that you want me to meet too." It's like when anybody suggests a dissertation topic, it didn't grab me. But I had written actually my undergraduate thesis on AIDS. At that point it was just called AIDS. So I had an interest in disease.

Dustin Grinnell (00:04:30 --> 00:04:34)
Because the Trudeau Sanatorium lasted from what period of time?

Ellen Damski (00:04:34 --> 00:05:25)
The official beginnings, and like any movement, there's a story that goes along with it. Some truth, I don't want to say some untruth, but the origins of myth type of thing. So the official opening was 1884. There were 3 small cottages that were built by Dr. Trudeau. Little Red, Little Blue, and I think Little Green.

Little Red was the one that became most associated. And I think that was because Trudeau himself lived there, actually, which is why that became the focus. And then it ended in about 1954. Actually, there was an image of the baseball player leaving the sanatorium that was the COVID of Life magazine in 1954. Pretty much almost immediately after drugs started to be used.

Dustin Grinnell (00:05:25 --> 00:05:26)
Antibiotics.

Ellen Damski (00:05:26 --> 00:05:26)
Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:05:26 --> 00:05:28)
Right. There was no need for these sanatoriums.

Ellen Damski (00:05:29 --> 00:05:29)
Sanatoriums anymore.

Dustin Grinnell (00:05:29 --> 00:05:31)
The antibiotics essentially ended the sanatorium movement.

Ellen Damski (00:05:31 --> 00:05:34)
[Speaker:JENNIFER] Yeah, pretty quickly. Literally, I would say almost overnight.

Dustin Grinnell (00:05:34 --> 00:06:00)
[Speaker:LATIF] Right. So you were leaving town, and you had resisted the idea of writing about this and researching this. And something about the irony there kind of caught you, because, like, this was a place for however many years—decades—was a place of people getting a terrible disease, a protracted disease, and wasting away from it, and not having a cure. And many didn't make it. And so you, what about that grabbed you?

Ellen Damski (00:06:00 --> 00:06:26)
[Speaker] Exactly what you said. I mean, I think irony is almost a good enough word. It was the rub, I guess. You know, the conversations that I had had with my father about this air of optimism. You know, there it was on the sign, celebrating 100 years of health. You know, it was like, seriously? It just, I mean, I remember literally stopping in my tracks, as much as you can stop in your tracks when you're driving.

Dustin Grinnell (00:06:27 --> 00:06:28)
You slammed on the brakes.

Ellen Damski (00:06:28 --> 00:06:29)
I slammed the brakes on.

Dustin Grinnell (00:06:30 --> 00:06:36)
Well, it's not often people get a lightning bolt like that for a dissertation topic. So I understand that was an impactful moment.

Ellen Damski (00:06:36 --> 00:07:11)
Yeah, my father was really into the architecture, which, you know, the porches certainly are interesting, but I wasn't anywhere near as interested in any of it as he was. And at that time, truthfully, I had no plans to do a PhD. So I think at that point I was thinking about a master's thesis. And I think he just thought that it was something interesting to write about, which he actually did, in fact, write about and publish before I finished my dissertation. He scooped you. He did totally scoop me. Yeah. Classic dad. Yeah, I know, right? There I was.

Dustin Grinnell (00:07:11 --> 00:08:02)
So you're in Saranac Lake, you see the sign that caught your eye. And so you parachute eventually into this subject and to do the work of— your degree wasn't in anthropology, but it is a very anthropological process that you followed, almost like an ethnographer. You know, you went to the library and you pulled records, and then you obviously did your own reading, and then you talked with patients who used to stay at the Trudeau Sanatorium, who got well and look back on their experience. And part of, I think, what's really interesting about this topic is kind of how you titled your dissertation. You called it The Fresh Air Cure, or A Way of Life: A Fresh Air Cure, something like that. And we can go wherever you want to go at this point, but I am very interested in like— How I got there?

Ellen Damski (00:08:02 --> 00:09:44)
The process. Actually, that wasn't the original title. I think you have the transcript, actually, where I underline A Way of Life. And that was the moment where it's like, okay, this is what it has to be called. When I originally started, I was more interested in the experience of space and place.

But that was before I started interviewing people. And also I was interested in the architecture. You know, I did want to write about something that I could actually prove existed. You know, I could see the structure, especially after having written about AIDS where even though I traced it, it was more ideological. And I wanted a material, I wanted material proof.

So my original idea was the idea of space. And again, that goes along with the optimism. When it changed and when it really, really took hold was when I started interviewing people. And the one interview that I would say that was the real changer, and I think it's okay if I mention her name, Grace Foyadelli. I don't think you've read her transcripts because I haven't found them yet.

But at the point where I had interviewed her, she was probably late '70s, '80s. She was pretty small in stature. Her voice was pretty high octave because some of the treatments that she had gone under had damaged her vocal cords. She also had used this treatment that no doctor I've ever spoken to has ever heard of. It was called the Menaldi Drain.

Dustin Grinnell (00:09:44 --> 00:09:46)
Yeah, I know, right?

Ellen Damski (00:09:46 --> 00:10:47)
But at the point where I talked to her, she told me that her son was only 2 years old when she was sent to the sanatorium. She lived there for 2 years. Her husband died within 5 years after. She asked if I wanted to see her ribs because she had had a surgery which they used to do. Cut the ribs at an angle, which as you can imagine, didn't do great things for your body overall.

But it supposedly rested the lungs. Almost everything that they did in terms of the idea of the cure or surgery or whatever was to take pressure off the lungs in some way, shape, or form. So the thing that I learned from that was that if somebody asks you if you want to see the ribs, You say yes. And I said no. And it was a big mistake because it's important.

Dustin Grinnell (00:10:47 --> 00:10:58)
So it was living history. And it sounds like you're more interested in space and place until you met a patient who was— humanized the subject for you and brought it home and made it personal.

Ellen Damski (00:10:58 --> 00:11:33)
Well, I was always interested. I mean, my degree, even though it's in philosophy, I mean, I would consider myself a folklorist, an oral historian, ethnographer. The terms that you mentioned. And what happened during the interview with Mrs. Foriudelli, and this was not the first time that I had heard it, but it was the first time that her life was really interrupted in so many ways. And she said to me, "It was the best time of my life." And I remember, and I think this is a false memory, me grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, which I don't think I really did, and saying, "Tell me what you—

Dustin Grinnell (00:11:33 --> 00:11:38)
how could it have been the best time of your life?" That's exactly what drew me to this conversation as well. You were dying.

Ellen Damski (00:11:39 --> 00:11:54)
Your son was a baby, your husband, you lost 2 years out of what was a very short marriage. And she was the catalyst that really put me on my quest to try to understand how the hell—

Dustin Grinnell (00:11:55 --> 00:11:55)
Fascinating.

Ellen Damski (00:11:55 --> 00:11:59)
Truthfully, people could remember those times as the best years of their life.

Dustin Grinnell (00:11:59 --> 00:13:01)
So I definitely want to get to that in a second, but I want to talk about sanatorium and sanatorium culture and the founder, because I think it's important, like, context for that patient. JAD: So a sanatorium is not a word we use a lot today. It's not a hospital because they don't deliver advanced medical treatment. There was no, like, medical intervention or cure for people with TB at the Trudeau Sanatorium. You went there to, quote, "chase the cure." And what you did is the founder, Edward Livingston Trudeau, his prescription, if you will, which worked for him, in his own bout of TB was the fresh air cure. It was to go to the Adirondack Mountains where the air was pure and fresh, and you would live this kind of outdoor life where you would rest essentially, and you would focus on wholesome food, and you would be around other people with community. And that was kind of like this quasi-hospital, you know? And people came from all over the country, right? Over the world.

Dustin Grinnell (00:13:01 --> 00:13:02)
Right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:13:02 --> 00:13:22)
And Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of Treasure Island, he spent time at the Trudeau Sanatorium. You talked with this patient who had been there, and she had experienced that, and she had gotten better. She had chased the cure and had been cured. So is there anything else to say about what a sanatorium—

Ellen Damski (00:13:23 --> 00:13:33)
Well, at the time, it was not an uncommon term. And there were 3 sanatoriums. It's spelled 3 different ways: sanatorium, sanitarium, and then— Sanatoria, the plural.

Dustin Grinnell (00:13:34 --> 00:13:34)
Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:13:34 --> 00:15:08)
Yeah, san is what a lot of them called it. But sanatorium with the two As was actually at the time more associated with physical health. And sanitarium was more associated with mental health. So also too, you know, just in terms of historical context, a lot was happening at that time. And also the idea of mental health too, and sanitarium was also on the rise at that time.

In terms of Dr. Trudeau and the outdoor, you know, Teddy Roosevelt was a big proponent, you know, And before that, we were not an outdoorsy people, Americans. And the Adirondack Mountains was the wilderness. And I think that term in today's context isn't even good enough. And we're talking about the wild, really emphasis on the wild part of wilderness. So when Trudeau went himself, and even though when you said it was successful, he died relatively young.

He died, I believe he was 66 or 70. So tuberculosis ultimately killed him. You know, he never used the word "cure" himself. He actually wrote an autobiography called "Acquiescence," and that was the word that he used. And I was thinking about that word.

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:08 --> 00:15:13)
It never sort of got out of the body. It either took you or became dormant.

Ellen Damski (00:15:13 --> 00:15:21)
Well, the thing with the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium, which was the original name, and then they shortened it to Trudeau. A little bit about him.

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:21 --> 00:15:24)
Yeah, let's talk about his story and where he came from.

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:24 --> 00:15:25)
He was French, actually.

Ellen Damski (00:15:25 --> 00:16:35)
I wish I knew more, but nobody that I spoke to was alive, knew him, because he had died in 1915. So he was French. It's a bit of a mystery to me to this day how he managed to do what he did to build basically somewhat of an empire in the wilderness, which I would imagine costs a little bit of money. I don't want to say he was a ne'er-do-well because it wasn't that, but medicine at the time historically was kind of the last stop. You can't do anything else, you might as well be a doctor.

It cost $5, I think, for him to be admitted. His own narrative was that he had a brother that died of TB, And that that was what inspired him. And he was sick himself. And apparently he had spent some time in the Adirondacks and loved it and had a guide 'cause you had to because again, it was the wilderness. It's not just taking you like we would think of a guide these days.

Dustin Grinnell (00:16:36 --> 00:16:45)
And found he was better. And so he has this incredible origin story for, you know, the fresh air cure. Yeah, absolutely.

Ellen Damski (00:16:45 --> 00:17:37)
And actually some of it, I don't want to say it's false because it's not, but like I said before, well, when I looked up the records, because the story is that two girls came from New York City. It's important to know that the original idea of the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium at that time was to offer the cure for the working class. And although that changed, it didn't change over time in terms of the sanatorium itself, but the culture of Saranac Lake attracted a lot of money and wealthy and famous and all that. Oh, and by the way, Robert Louis Stevenson, he lived separately. Apparently he and Trudeau really clashed or Stevenson clashed with some of the other members. There's been some stories about that. And he ultimately just went to the islands and died.

Dustin Grinnell (00:17:37 --> 00:17:46)
Right, 'cause he had a house. He still has a house. It's a historical site. You can go there and tour it. And then yeah, he eventually went to warmer climates to try to—

Ellen Damski (00:17:46 --> 00:17:51)
Which some will say that's what did him in. He should have stayed in the Adirondacks.

Dustin Grinnell (00:17:51 --> 00:17:54)
The Adirondacks is not known for being warm and balmy.

Dustin Grinnell (00:17:54 --> 00:17:58)
Well, it's 1,500 feet high in altitude. And yeah, the winters are brutal.

Ellen Damski (00:17:59 --> 00:19:06)
You know, remember this is before science in some ways. I know that sounds a little unbelievable because 1800s wasn't that long ago. So it wasn't the first time or the first idea that you go someplace for climate. For instance, a lot of the people that went west for gold were also TB people. So, Trudeau wanted to make the experience that he had accessible to the working class.

So that was how it was founded. And then what happened is that all of Saranac Lake became basically revolved around the sanatorium. People might have lived in what became known as cure cottages off of the grounds. And the grounds, I think you've been there, they still exist. I believe now it's owned by the American Medical Association.

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:06 --> 00:19:25)
I think that you mentioned that 1 out of 3 people around that time in Saranac Lake was in some way associated with the tuberculosis treatment. So it was a cottage industry. Absolutely. So the sign makes sense in a way that you saw at the beginning. You know, it's 100 years of health, but it was 100 years of treating a terrible disease as well.

Ellen Damski (00:19:26 --> 00:19:55)
Well, when I first started my research, when I went to— I think it was my first trip to do some of the fieldwork, a woman by the name of Mary Hotelling that was— she's probably the the premier expert on all things Saranac Lake and Trudeau. She sat me down and said, "You need to know most of the people died." She said, "So it's going to be tough." This isn't a happy story in a way. It is and it isn't. I mean, but the stories that I heard from the people—

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:55 --> 00:19:57)
The survivors, essentially, the people who—

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:58 --> 00:20:00)
But I never heard that word from them. Not survivor.

Dustin Grinnell (00:20:00 --> 00:20:01)
No. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:20:01 --> 00:20:07)
But that was also More before that term wasn't as much part of the vernacular.

Dustin Grinnell (00:20:07 --> 00:20:22)
It's a fascinating contradiction that, like, most people who went there did not survive. And yet, the people who did look back on the time quite fondly as a time that wasn't just chasing the cure. Well, more than fondly.

Ellen Damski (00:20:22 --> 00:21:06)
I mean, some stayed there. Also, too, the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium—this is important—did not take people that were in advanced stages of TB. And I don't want to get necessarily too graphic about it. But so there are chances not only to get better, but also to experiment with. And again, I want to be careful here because it wasn't like they were doing all these terrible experiments. But I mentioned before the Menaldi drain. And so there was definitely some, let's give this a shot, and more formal. They were all doctors, obviously. And there's an institute, the Trudeau Institute, that researches infectious diseases. So it was actively progressive, I would say.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:06 --> 00:21:07)
Sure.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:07 --> 00:21:15)
I mean, even in the COVID pandemic, there's a period of an explosion of treatment possibilities. You know, what works, what doesn't work. And I'm sure—

Ellen Damski (00:21:15 --> 00:21:41)
Particularly when you're in the middle of it. Although TB has been around for a long time. But, you know, and a funny thing is that a lot of people asked me then, and it's been a number of years since I wrote this, But do I think that this could happen again? And then, you know, since that time we've had the pandemic. At that point, I would have said, I don't think so. And I think that that's been borne out by the experiences of the pandemic.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:41 --> 00:21:58)
And so just to circle back again on Trudeau's story, right? So his brother dies of TB, he gets TB, goes to the Adirondacks, gets better. So walk me through like the founding of his sanatorium because he's known as the the founder of the Santorum movement.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:58 --> 00:21:58)
[Speaker:MG] Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:21:58 --> 00:23:39)
And that's actually something else my father and I used to talk about because we think one of— or it's been written that one of the founders was— or benefactors, Harriman, the railroad guy, who apparently was not known for generosity. But I imagine Trudeau must have been an incredibly charismatic person. I actually have thought sometimes if I were to write this again, I would write it as basically an evangelical movement. And I think it has a lot of the hallmarks of that. How so?

Well, there was a deep belief in the cure and the founder of the cure, which I wouldn't call it a cult. But a lot of it had to do with the people that were leading you through the darkness. I don't mean to sound all melodramatic over here. But a lot of the nurses and doctors had TB themselves. I mean, it was pretty contagious.

So it was— That was, you know, unfortunately bound to happen. But I think for him to have established the relationships that he had with the patients, with the other doctors, for him to have built a community, which is really what he did, of people that were dying, and to be able to make them feel and be as cared for as they were, to form a philosophy that sustained them, in many cases, I would say for 60 or 70 years. A lot of these people that I interviewed were in their early 20s, if not younger, when I interviewed them. And it opened in 1884 and closed in 1954. So that time alone, the roots were deep.

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:39 --> 00:23:41)
And so what is it about this guy?

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:41 --> 00:23:47)
You know, there's the charisma, there's the leadership, but it's the ideology, it's the optimism.

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:48 --> 00:23:48)
I guess.

Ellen Damski (00:23:48 --> 00:24:20)
I mean, that I'll never know. There was one person that I was hoping would have maybe have met him. And she hadn't because she was in her late 90s when I— and somebody else had suggested that she may have known him. She did know one of his sons ended up taking over, becoming a doctor, and she did know him and, you know, felt that they were family. But, you know, even family obviously can be a contested term in terms of ideology and so on and so forth. So I don't know. I don't know. I mean, right place, right time.

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:21 --> 00:24:22)
But it's hope, right?

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:22 --> 00:24:48)
You know, if you are in the advanced stages of the disease and you're pretty much— you've exhausted your options, you chase the cure. You go to this place and you meet other people in the same situations. Your healthcare providers have had the disease themselves, so there's a level of empathy and compassion that they can bring to the care. And you feel maybe that this is a place of hope. This is a place where the psychological aspects of healing can be activated.

Ellen Damski (00:24:48 --> 00:25:19)
Well, in some cases, they got sent there, which is another thing that probably would never happen today. Their employer sent them. And also, there was a— not a private sanatorium close by called Raybrook, state-owned, which was a very different experience. And one thing that I came to conclude by the time I finished, and I know we're trying to start at the beginning here, was that, you know, we've all been part of a group that we can say you have to be part of that group to understand.

Dustin Grinnell (00:25:19 --> 00:25:21)
Solidarity that comes with it.

Ellen Damski (00:25:21 --> 00:25:32)
Yeah. And that's why you had asked me at some point about my use of books that talked about war. It's often talked about in very similar ways that you've survived a battle of sorts.

Dustin Grinnell (00:25:32 --> 00:25:37)
Tim O'Brien's Things They Carried. You reference that in your dissertation.

Ellen Damski (00:25:37 --> 00:25:51)
I mean, I've not been in war. I've not been in a sanatorium. Can I understand that this camaraderie developed or this hope. Yes, but it's still to this day, it's like the best days of your life.

Dustin Grinnell (00:25:51 --> 00:26:31)
Well, the thing that strikes me is if you think about these cure cottages, you think about the porch, the wraparound porch where patients would be brought out during the day to sit in the sitting cots, I think it was. And you had blankets on you and you developed real friendships. And you also developed romantic relationships. A lot of these patients coupled up, married later. Like, I just see that picture in my mind of a dozen people sitting on the porch together. And you're just— you're sick. You're fatigued. You don't feel well. In some cases, you're on death's doorstep. But at least you have friends. At least you have camaraderie. At least you have people you like and you can hang out with. And they're all going through the same exact thing as you're going through.

Ellen Damski (00:26:31 --> 00:27:00)
[Speaker:LISA] But that's also assuming that you're choosing your porch mates. And also, some of them— in the cottages, the porches were small. It might only have held 1 or 2 people. And as I mentioned at some point, there were some interesting blends of people, which in some ways may have been a benefit because you did encounter people that you may— I mean, there were gangsters. There were all sorts of people that were on this porch from 1 to 3, I believe.

Dustin Grinnell (00:27:00 --> 00:27:02)
Disease doesn't discriminate.

Ellen Damski (00:27:02 --> 00:27:04)
No, but the porches could have.

Dustin Grinnell (00:27:04 --> 00:27:08)
Got it. So meaning Some people went out, some people didn't, or yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:27:09 --> 00:28:18)
And the idea of the cure porch, which is different from the wraparound porch, is that you were out there as long as you could be. You know, some people talk about waking up and with snow on their beds. And so it's an extended period of time that you're not necessarily moving around. You're confined to your bed. In town, they're all known as cottages in Saranac Lake.

They were called up cottages, which meant you could move around or down. You know, the people that tended to be cared for in the houses in town tended to be sicker. So at the same time, again, we remember it as, oh, I loved my porch mate. When, you know, certainly, why wouldn't there be some challenges? I'm not even necessarily saying bad neighbor challenges, but just challenges.

Dustin Grinnell (00:28:18 --> 00:28:42)
[Speaker:JAD] I think about the term, like, trauma bonding. But I think the war analogy is an interesting one. Sebastian Junger, a nonfiction writer, wrote a book called Tribe. And he talked about this, the bonds that soldiers create with each other when they're in these very life-threatening circumstances that last their entire lives. It's almost, in a sanatorium, I could see a similar dynamic happening.

Ellen Damski (00:28:42 --> 00:29:07)
[Speaker:TAYLOR] But I think it was more than that. I think it was more than a tribe. I think it really changed the way people saw life. Pretty much everybody that I talked to, I'm tempted to say everybody, had gone on to live very rich lives, you know, very engaged. And still, 70 years later, would say it was the best time. Which I think part of that had to do with You know, their meals were given to them.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:08 --> 00:29:09)
The structured and regimented thing.

Ellen Damski (00:29:09 --> 00:29:10)
Which a lot of people said.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:11 --> 00:29:14)
They said, "We didn't have to worry about anything." You don't. You don't even.

Ellen Damski (00:29:14 --> 00:29:18)
Except for dying. And when I brought that up at certain points. You only have to worry about healing.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:19 --> 00:29:20)
That's your main.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:20 --> 00:29:21)
Focus on your health.

Ellen Damski (00:29:21 --> 00:29:44)
On your health, which is, I don't even know about focus 'cause you're acquiescent. And one person said, I think it was in the transcripts, I believe it was Mrs. Wareham said, "We never thought about dying." You know, and a lot of the people were young. So at 19, you don't necessarily think about it, although evidence would suggest otherwise.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:45 --> 00:30:00)
[Speaker:TREVOR_BURRUS] So you go through this for the patients you spoke to who had reached a period of acquiescence. You said they live rich. Most of them live these rich lives now. And I think there's something almost cliché there about, you know, going to face your own mortality, right?

Ellen Damski (00:30:00 --> 00:30:27)
[Speaker:TAYLOR] Well, that, but they never really talked about that. That was what was interesting to me was they didn't say, "I was looking at death and I had to live the best life." It wasn't that kind of dichotomy. It wasn't that, "I had a near-death experience, so now I have to live life to every moment." And also some of the habits, although I would say that that became more of a philosophy of life was every one of them sleeps with the window open.

Dustin Grinnell (00:30:27 --> 00:30:28)
To this day?

Dustin Grinnell (00:30:28 --> 00:30:31)
Like throughout their life? Yep. To circulate the air.

Ellen Damski (00:30:31 --> 00:31:48)
Not good because you can't open the window. Always slept with the— you know, I remember, well, at that time too, the late 1800s, although I didn't interview people obviously that went that far back, the idea of night air, night air was bad. You know, it was the Romantic poets that kind of brought that to us. For some reason, I keep thinking about Mary Poppins. You know the scene?

Have you seen Mary Poppins? The original? Well, when you go home and watch it, the scene with Dick Van Dyke and his— and people make fun of me because apparently I say this word incorrectly— chimney. But I think in Mary Poppins they say chimney. There's a scene where Dick Van Dyke and his fellow chimney sweeps are singing on top of the rooftops.

And the idea that the air is dirty, you know, and it's night air. It's not dare. So there was a sense too that, you know, the wilderness is a dangerous place. But the cities became— that was where TB really, you know, got its foothold. And unfortunately too, some of the idea that the working class and immigrants, obviously too at the time, it was a time of heavy immigration.

Dustin Grinnell (00:31:48 --> 00:32:00)
And what else was Trudeau doing at the sanatorium during this time? He was— he's a doctor himself, so he's treating patients. Yeah, he's raising money.

Ellen Damski (00:32:00 --> 00:32:07)
He was doing research too. He's doing research on the disease, and he himself was not well.

Dustin Grinnell (00:32:07 --> 00:32:14)
So he was in this protracted disease state. So he would— did he suffer from fatigue if he overworked himself? Or—

Ellen Damski (00:32:14 --> 00:32:21)
yeah, I think he I don't think he was functioning yet. And also, too, he had a daughter that died of TB.

Dustin Grinnell (00:32:21 --> 00:32:22)
His daughter. [Speaker:JAD] Right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:32:22 --> 00:32:23)
His brother and daughter.

Ellen Damski (00:32:23 --> 00:33:52)
[Speaker:JULIE GILMORE] Yeah. And his son, he had a son who apparently was his favorite, died not— apparently not of tuberculosis, of something else. So surviving son went on. And also, too, just out of pop culture interest, he was Gary Trudeau, the cartoonist, Doonesbury, great-grandfather. And I actually wrote to Gary Trudeau at one point.

And I did it I wrote it later than I would have if he hadn't been Gary Trudeau because I didn't want him to think just because he was famous I was writing to him. And I told him if you weren't famous, you probably would have heard from me a lot sooner. But I was curious about if anybody knew anything more. The best and worst thing in my mind that Trudeau did was write an autobiography because what happened was a lot of the research referred back to that autobiography. And I think you always have to question what people, including myself, say about themselves.

You know, going back to the myth of origin. When I dug into the medical records, as I was saying before, the idea was that these two women lived in Little Red. Why they chose that, I think, was because Trudeau himself had lived there for a while. Supposedly, both sisters had TB. You know, and the idea of two young women going into the wilderness by themselves.

Dustin Grinnell (00:33:53 --> 00:34:12)
Are there scholars or even journalists, are they going back and double-checking the facts of the time with Trudeau's conceptualization of himself and his autobiography? Because I imagine there's a lot of fabrication. I mean, to some degree, he was an imaginative person, and I could see him fudging some things in his own story. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:34:12 --> 00:36:22)
I don't know what other research did and didn't do. One of the interesting things about doing the oral histories was going into people's houses and And almost everybody had every single one of the books that had ever been written about Saranac Lake. And they all had very definite ideas, you know, about the person that wrote them and about the perceptions or whatever. Trudeau, I would say himself and his autobiography were pretty untouchable. So that's why I was so shocked.

I think it's in my notes somewhere in big letters with exclamation points. Like, I think the sisters' names were Marian Alice Hunt, and that one of them, at least In what I'm seeing, didn't have tuberculosis. But at that time, to send— not only to send a young woman by herself into the woods wasn't something that would be done. Also, Alice and Mary were not the first ones there at the cottages that he built. But they became the narrative.

And I think they were sent home and pretty much nothing more could be done. Also, one thing too, as far as the optimism, you know, when somebody did die, They were very careful about how that was handled. Like, the corpses, they were— people were taken out of town at night. And also, one thing I remember about one of the times when I visited my father was he was a walker, and he liked to walk to the cemetery. And I think one of the things that got him really interested was there's apparently there was a ship of Norwegian sailors that that landed in Saranac Lake and died there.

Dustin Grinnell (00:36:22 --> 00:37:01)
In some ways, a sanatorium maybe exists because there isn't an effective treatment. It's not quite hospice, but it's something below hospice. So it's like, what I'm getting at is that the, you know, when antibiotics come on the scene, it was an effective way of treating TB. So that, as I understand by reading your work, was like effectively the end of the sanatorium movement, at least as it— in regards to TB. So how did that happen? What was that transition of all of a sudden we have antibiotics and there's no need for the Trudeau Sanatorium? What was that transition like?

Ellen Damski (00:37:02 --> 00:37:44)
And it wasn't just the Trudeau Sanatorium. It was across the country. Also, the sanatoriums, too, could be designated and divided. TB isn't just a disease of the lung. It's the one that we know most of.

But, like, children would get what was called Pott's disease. It actually had a specific name. And it usually affected the spine. Used to be, I would say not so much anymore, that we'd see somebody who looked like they had a spinal situation. They probably had TB as a child.

Dustin Grinnell (00:37:45 --> 00:37:49)
And that was the sense from inside Saranac Lake. It's a sleepy town.

Ellen Damski (00:37:49 --> 00:37:57)
It's kind of off the beaten path. For sure. But it's also only 10 miles away from Lake Placid, which is— The Olympics have been there twice.

Dustin Grinnell (00:37:57 --> 00:37:59)
It overshadows this. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:38:00 --> 00:38:15)
So, you know, the AMA, I believe, uses it for retreats and things like that, which means you're going there for something special. You know, it's kind of, again, off the beaten path. But it did have a huge economic impact on the city of Saranac Lake when it closed.

Dustin Grinnell (00:38:15 --> 00:38:16)
Did it shut down essentially, the sanatorium?

Ellen Damski (00:38:16 --> 00:39:02)
Well, another interesting thing that happens with the buildings, that the sanatoriums, and this is true of Trudeau in many places, is that they became something else. But there was this prevailing idea that disease actually gets into the walls. So often structures were burnt down or torn down or turned into something that was sort of lateral, like a prison. You know, and I mean, I've been into other buildings that used to be sanatoriums and have become something else. And, you know, you can often tell the way that the physical structure is set up, you know, low sinks and a lot of times doorways. And this is one way you can look at a cure cottage is that sometimes the width of the doorway is about the same width of the beds that roll in and out.

Dustin Grinnell (00:39:02 --> 00:39:03)
Right. They're quite wide.

Ellen Damski (00:39:03 --> 00:39:14)
Yeah. But the introduction of drugs was the end of the sanatorium movement. And to some degree, the end of Saranac Lake life as it was known during that time.

Dustin Grinnell (00:39:15 --> 00:40:04)
I guess one of the things I wanted to talk about is sort of the biology of the disease. And I know you're not a biologist, But I guess one of the things I found in researching is that, you know, I obviously knew about TB globally and how it affected people, but I didn't understand the scope of the public health problem. Apparently, in 2020, 1.5 million people lost their lives to TB. And, you know, it's treatable, it's curable. We have antibiotics, but in developing countries, it infects more than 10 million people a year. And a lot of that has to do with people who can't access care or they don't have time to complete, like, lengthy treatment. We've talked about acquiescence. But when you talk to patients, what was their subjective experience of the disease? What did they feel like? What was happening to them?

Ellen Damski (00:40:04 --> 00:41:19)
When you have TB, It's hard to eat, you know, because digestion and just the act of eating requires oxygen, which when you have a disease of the lung is challenged. And she told me about a time where I think her husband had come to visit, took her out for a steak dinner. You know, and the Trudeau Sanatorium served up a pretty nice menu, you know, and desserts and very rich food. You know, the idea was that you had to maintain a certain weight. Actually, a lot of times if you were allowed off the campus of the sanatorium, you had to weigh a certain amount.

But she talked about looking at the steak and not being able to eat it. And people go, "Come on, come on, eat, eat, eat." And I think, you know, she just cried and just said, "I just can't." Not because she was, like, nauseous, but because she physically couldn't. Physically couldn't, which I, you know, I think we can— we've all had, unfortunately, I think, a point where it's like, no matter how much you want that steak, you just can't do it. But this was The physical inability— people with lung disease don't often tend to be overweight. You know, you can't get the air out either.

Dustin Grinnell (00:41:19 --> 00:41:23)
It's like labored breathing is the experience. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:41:23 --> 00:41:44)
Well, and also too, that goes back to, you know, one of the inventions, the Adirondack chair, which is still around today. You know, it was designed by a doctor. A lot of people don't know this. And, you know, I think one of the reasons it survived is 'Cause even as hard as the wood is, it's very comfortable, the position of the body. You know, it kind of takes the weight off the lungs.

Dustin Grinnell (00:41:45 --> 00:41:49)
So that's what it is. If you think about an Adirondack chair and you fold yourself into it.

Ellen Damski (00:41:49 --> 00:41:55)
The Adirondack chair was designed, developed, and invented at the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium.

Dustin Grinnell (00:41:55 --> 00:41:58)
Specifically for people with this lung disease. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:41:58 --> 00:42:15)
Actually, a lot of times that was what they were in a lot of the time. 'Cause, you know, they came up and down. There were chairs and beds. Although they also had real beds. But going back to the etiology of the disease, TB has been around forever. I mean, it's phthisis. It was one of the Greek terms.

Dustin Grinnell (00:42:15 --> 00:42:17)
I mean, it's been around for thousands of years. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:42:17 --> 00:42:21)
All ancient cultures have stories of China, Egypt. It's been around a long time.

Ellen Damski (00:42:21 --> 00:43:23)
And it does, like many diseases, kind of cycle. Cyclical, you know, sort of like the pandemic. It's been what— the last big pandemic was the flu epidemic in 1915. So with all due respect, we were kind of— our number was up for another one. And, you know, scientists have always been challenged to explain why it suddenly comes up and then why it stops.

Kind of like, I think we all remember March 16th. And then it just this week, I think it's like, The pandemic as we know it, I think it's safe to say, has ended. And there was a hope that the doctor, his name is spelled K-O-C-H, Dr. Koch or Dr. Koch, however you pronounce it. He was the one that identified the tubercle bacillus. And that was after germ theory, Virchow had, it's not invented germ theory, but—

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:23 --> 00:43:25)
Yeah, just created that idea.

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:25 --> 00:43:27)
Framework to think about.

Ellen Damski (00:43:27 --> 00:43:30)
Yeah. Actually, there's a really great story about Virchow being in the room.

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:30 --> 00:43:31)
Have at it. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:43:32 --> 00:43:45)
One of my favorite moments. When— I always called him Koch. When Koch announced the tubercle bacillus at a conference, you know, where often these things, the scientific conferences, are the place to be if you want to know what's happening.

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:45 --> 00:43:48)
And if you're ahead of the game, everyone heckles you and walks out of the room.

Ellen Damski (00:43:48 --> 00:43:59)
Oh, yeah. Well, he did. That's literally— Virchow got up and walked out. And then the hope of Koch was that he was then going to be able to to find a cure. Because once you know the cause, the cure, you know, what's next.

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:59 --> 00:44:02)
[Speaker:TAYLOR] That was the first thing we did with COVID We had to understand the genetics of it.

Ellen Damski (00:44:02 --> 00:44:57)
He tried. There were a couple false starts, you know, and some excitement that he was going to. And then, you know, these days, it does make sense, obviously, developing countries. TB is both infectious and contagious. You know, it can TB can spread relatively easily.

Some populations, like any disease, have natural immunity, which might mean that they're immune to TB because they get something else. And I want to say it's— I hate to say crapshoot, but, you know, like COVID, we all know somebody whose wife got it and the husband didn't, you know. So why did one person get it and the other not? You know, so we do at the same time have the the science and then a little bit of the mystery. A cure then— a cure takes hold, but then you find that you've got to double it up with something else.

Dustin Grinnell (00:44:57 --> 00:45:08)
Because of the infinitely creative capacity of microorganisms to co-evolve with our own weapons. And now we have multi-resistant tuberculosis.

Ellen Damski (00:45:08 --> 00:46:07)
We had multi-resistant drug tuberculosis from the beginning, I think. I always felt that because it wasn't just streptomycin. They were doubling up and, you know, mixing drugs. They were throwing everything at it, right? Yeah. Well, and then things worked and didn't work. And, you know, and when you're in a prison kind of a situation, at one and the same time, you have a population that's stable and stationary, but then evolving. You know, so you have people coming in not only as inmates, but as visitors. But then you have sort of this low-level platform of disease, if that makes sense. Well, there's a term, actually, hospitalism. That some of us that are a little bit older, whose parents and grandparents really resisted going to hospitals because they'd say, "I'm going to die there." Well, that was a valid fear because hospitals were, before drugs, where they would cut off limbs and things like that because they couldn't control infection or gangrene. You were going to die there.

Dustin Grinnell (00:46:07 --> 00:46:09)
You'd catch something or—

Ellen Damski (00:46:09 --> 00:46:38)
Yeah. I mean, there was a couple of sayings: "The treatment was successful, but the patient died." because the amputation worked, but the patient didn't survive. I mean, women used to die a lot from what was called puerperal fever, which is an infection that comes in after childbirth. And hospitalism was a term that was associated with, you know, you go to the hospital and you're going to die there. But why wouldn't infection be more rampant in a hospital when you have so many possibilities? Let me put it that way.

Dustin Grinnell (00:46:38 --> 00:46:47)
[Speaker:MG] There was a bank robber who asked why Hey, why do you rob banks? He said, that's where the money is. And so in a way, that's where the disease is. It's in the hospital.

Ellen Damski (00:46:47 --> 00:46:53)
Yeah, I mean, a cousin of mine died of COVID that he got in the hospital, contracted in the hospital. So yeah, there was that.

Dustin Grinnell (00:46:53 --> 00:46:58)
Yeah, stop me if you don't want to talk about this totally, but Lyme disease.

Dustin Grinnell (00:46:58 --> 00:47:00)
Yeah, that did definitely play a part.

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:00 --> 00:47:08)
So you, and again, just stop me right now, but like if you don't want to get into it, but personally you were affected by Lyme I had it at the—

Ellen Damski (00:47:09 --> 00:47:13)
I think if I hadn't had it, I don't know that I would have written this dissertation. That's kind of what I was wondering.

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:13 --> 00:47:32)
So Trudeau has a brother who passes from TB and a daughter eventually. He had it himself. And isn't that a common theme? You know, a quest can be born from your personal experience with something. So I'm not sure that Trudeau would have— had he not gone to the Adirondacks to get better, I don't think he would have started. So how did your experience—

Ellen Damski (00:47:32 --> 00:48:17)
Well, actually, when I was writing about AIDS, I was really sick with Lyme disease. And this was in 1989, so, and we're really just beginning to hear about the experience of Lyme disease. And we're talking, what, 30, you do the math. It's been a while. You know, and people like Amy Tan, who, and I'm fine with talking about it because I think we need people to understand more about it. I always felt that Lyme disease was ill-timed. It came up at the same time as a lot of these sort of mysterious autoimmunes. And that also, unfortunately, were associated with women, like chronic fatigue, like women get tired and, you know. And Lyme disease isn't contagious. It's infectious. You can't get it other than a blood transfusion maybe or a tick.

Dustin Grinnell (00:48:17 --> 00:48:20)
And you got it from a tick bite. Yeah. And did you have a rash?

Ellen Damski (00:48:21 --> 00:48:41)
I did, which is a huge misnomer. A rash is characteristic of a tick bite. But I had the unusual pleasure, and it was in a lot of ways actually, weirdly, of being treated in a group of people because where I was living at the time, Lyme disease was a hotbed, literally. I had a really—

Dustin Grinnell (00:48:41 --> 00:48:42)
This is like Nantucket?

Ellen Damski (00:48:42 --> 00:49:03)
Yeah. I was in New York. But I had a really great doctor. I didn't experience what a lot of people did. Nobody told me I was crazy or anything like that. And actually, I was working at a health center. And the joke was I was the sickest person there. But they generously kept me on even though I had very little brain function.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:03 --> 00:49:04)
You had chronic Lyme.

Ellen Damski (00:49:04 --> 00:49:20)
I got late stage. By the time they figured it out, it was already crossed over the blood-brain barrier. So as far as, like, relativity of experience, at that time, they didn't believe Lyme disease was fatal, although I would have begged to differ.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:20 --> 00:49:21)
I felt like I would.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:21 --> 00:49:25)
You got hit by a truck. You felt like you maybe was going to die from it.

Ellen Damski (00:49:25 --> 00:49:45)
Well, you just— yeah, I felt like I was going to die. And actually, when I was writing about AIDS, a dear friend of mine did. And I felt very committed to if I was going to do any of this kind of work, it had to serve a purpose. I didn't want it sitting on a shelf like most dissertations and theses do and collect dust.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:45 --> 00:49:49)
Totally. Yeah. So there was a personal aspect to this.

Ellen Damski (00:49:49 --> 00:49:59)
Yeah, it was ironic in a lot of ways because you're writing about something that's not happening to you, but yet it's happening to you. I mean, I remember at one point sitting and typing. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but before—

Dustin Grinnell (00:50:00 --> 00:50:02)
Now we just have AI write whatever we need to. I know, right?

Ellen Damski (00:50:02 --> 00:50:43)
But I'm sitting and I had to do the intravenous therapy, It was 30 days every single day. Wow. Yeah, mine was from Thanksgiving till New Year's Eve Day. Merry Christmas. No, it just blew right over that one.

I think my doctor let me have champagne. So they go up your arm. And the drugs that they use aren't necessarily friendly. And I was a bit of a guinea pig because they basically paid for it. And I knew they were experimenting.

Dustin Grinnell (00:50:43 --> 00:50:44)
There was a stigma.

Ellen Damski (00:50:44 --> 00:51:16)
Yeah. And people were like, "Why is your hand wrapped up?" Because I kept it wrapped up because it was ugly. And I'd say, "Well, I have Lyme disease." And they would run. But I felt like I had an obligation to educate people, you know, that you're not going to catch it. This is what it is. This is how it's contracted. Oh, but when you said about the rash, I'm sorry. What happened with me, which was really kind of ironic, was most of the people that I was treated with, and there was probably about 20 or 30 of us that kind of were rotating, and we were all in a room hooked up to our machines and singing songs and all sorts of things.

Dustin Grinnell (00:51:16 --> 00:51:18)
It was a little bit like a group therapy. It was.

Ellen Damski (00:51:18 --> 00:51:28)
It was actually kind of great. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I have said myself, getting Lyme disease was one of the best experiences.

Dustin Grinnell (00:51:28 --> 00:51:28)
And there we go.

Ellen Damski (00:51:29 --> 00:51:57)
Yeah. But physically, I don't mean that necessarily. No, because it was brutal and you felt like you were going to die. Well, and I learned— you learn— for me, I never heard this, let me say it like that, from the TB people. I learned what my limitations were or weren't. You know, for instance, one thing that you don't hear much about Lyme disease is it can be incredibly painful. Mine settled in my spine, actually. I had had a back injury at one point. And to me, it made sense. Why wouldn't it go where the welcome sign is already out.

Dustin Grinnell (00:51:57 --> 00:51:58)
Come on in, the water's warm.

Ellen Damski (00:51:58 --> 00:52:09)
Yeah, exactly. And actually, that was one thing that sort of took longer to diagnose because at that point, that wasn't one of the symptoms. And I was intermittently paralyzed, actually.

Dustin Grinnell (00:52:09 --> 00:52:14)
And the symptoms can land and go very, very quickly. Right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:52:14 --> 00:52:17)
Just like COVID, it affects multiple body systems.

Ellen Damski (00:52:17 --> 00:52:30)
I always said it affects everything but my hair. I had some good hair days, but everything else— pretty much everything else was up for crabs. But at the same time, having said that, it was not the best time of my life.

Dustin Grinnell (00:52:31 --> 00:52:32)
And that's what's common here, right?

Dustin Grinnell (00:52:32 --> 00:52:45)
Is that the actual experience of disease is not a time of romanticism. This is a time of getting through it. But then it's on the other side of it, the kind of post-traumatic recovery is I think what we're—

Ellen Damski (00:52:45 --> 00:53:38)
I don't know. I mean, because I heard people saying it exactly, which is one of the things that I look for as a folklorist is patterns. And sometimes that means Literally, I want to see that somebody said the same sentence over and over and over again. And when they said over and over and over again, it is the best time of my life. I mean, I said it was a good experience a lot of times, but it wasn't the best experience and certainly not the best experience of my life. So that was when I came to the conclusion ultimately that as good research as I may have done or as great interviews that I had, and they were amazing, absolutely amazing. Do I understand how they can look back and remember it as the best time of their life, particularly when we're talking people that went on to live, as I said before, very rich lives? I would say it's something that really still kind of baffles me.

Dustin Grinnell (00:53:38 --> 00:53:48)
Really? Because, like, there are possible explanations, which we've talked about, with a sense of community, the solidarity, the fact that life was structured and regimented and—

Dustin Grinnell (00:53:48 --> 00:53:52)
But they never really said, They didn't use those words. No, no. That's what—

Ellen Damski (00:53:52 --> 00:54:34)
like, I can't remember anybody saying, you know— Right. I found my tribe or something. Yeah. Or my lifelong friend. We were in the sanatorium. I mean, and I never really thought about it like this, but even the interviews were kind of solitary. And I think what I mean by that is that when you do fieldwork, you're usually doing it with a focus. So there is a communal and a community aspect. Of people in a group that there's some underlying commonality. And obviously there was in this case, but I don't remember anybody ever mentioning anybody by name. I mean, there was a couple that met there and cousin-ing people did.

Dustin Grinnell (00:54:34 --> 00:54:39)
That was the term that was used for illicit affairs. The idea of basically hooking up at the sanatorium. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:54:39 --> 00:54:48)
And that I forgot exactly that there was a line, a state line that once you crossed, that you were no longer married. Oh, interesting.

Dustin Grinnell (00:54:48 --> 00:54:52)
After you get out of the kind of the ecosystem. Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:54:52 --> 00:55:04)
And actually, one of the most fun parts for me of the whole process was all the stories that people told me about getting around the rules, as much as they lived by them and swore by them.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:04 --> 00:55:08)
There's such a summer camp-like thing going on here. Oh, totally. Well, they were young.

Ellen Damski (00:55:08 --> 00:55:09)
They were sneaking into bars at night.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:09 --> 00:55:11)
That's right. I guess if you're in your 20s, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:55:11 --> 00:55:19)
I mean, the toilet bowls, that's where you kept your liquor to keep it cold. I mean, there was The taxi drivers that meet me at 12 by the back door.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:19 --> 00:55:32)
We all look back on summer camp and we say, "Man, that was a hoot. That was a great time." Because you did stuff like that. You messed around and you got into stuff. And so, it sounds like we're getting it still at why it was the best time of your life.

Ellen Damski (00:55:32 --> 00:55:43)
Yeah. And that actually, I think you hit on something there. And if you look at a lot of the pictures, you do see images of people laying in bed. You don't see 5 minutes before.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:43 --> 00:55:43)
You're exactly right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:43 --> 00:55:48)
You don't see the disease state. You know, you see the disease and how it affects the body.

Ellen Damski (00:55:48 --> 00:56:03)
Actually, there was one saying that was you could tell who had TB in Saranac Lake because they were the ones that looked healthy. And a lot of times you'll see people in these pictures that they're outdoors and, you know, they do. They're the picture of health.

Dustin Grinnell (00:56:03 --> 00:56:15)
That's the untold story. I think you should do that next, which is that, you know, let's forget about those those images of people lying in bed. And let's try to dig up pictures of them at bars and them skirting the rules and having fun.

Dustin Grinnell (00:56:15 --> 00:56:16)
That's kind of interesting.

Ellen Damski (00:56:16 --> 00:56:22)
Well, there was one woman that I interviewed. This was the one I mentioned to you earlier. It was a 7-hour interview.

Dustin Grinnell (00:56:22 --> 00:56:23)
7 hours.

Ellen Damski (00:56:23 --> 00:57:03)
And I'm leaving 7 hours later. And I see this picture on her wall. And it's Mark Twain in a bar. And I I said, "Is that Mark Twain?" And she said, "Oh yeah, this house used to be a speakeasy." I was like, "Oh." And also, you know, 1920s was the heyday of the sanatorium movement. And everybody, including them, was roaring. You know, they were not necessarily not partaking in not only life, but what was happening in the rest of the world. And they were very close to Canada. So, you know, you had very organized crime, you know, liquor, And as you said, there were literal gangsters there.

Dustin Grinnell (00:57:03 --> 00:57:08)
Yeah, I mean, gangsters got TB. Yeah, it didn't discriminate.

Ellen Damski (00:57:09 --> 00:57:35)
It didn't discriminate. But one thing I've always said is that people there had the opportunity to maybe die in more comfortable circumstances. I mean, you don't necessarily die better. I would imagine TB is a pretty awful way to die. I don't think that there was necessarily anything anybody could do at that time and I don't know if they were using drugs then, morphine and things like that, but you were possibly more comfortable.

Dustin Grinnell (00:57:35 --> 00:57:53)
[Speaker:JAD] Well, if I had TB and I was about to die, I would certainly want my caregivers to know what that's like. There's a level of compassion that they would bring to it. So I can imagine that those final days would be more comfortable because you were literally surrounded by people who knew exactly what you were going through.

Ellen Damski (00:57:54 --> 00:58:02)
And with all due respect, but physically, it's got to be a terrible way to die. So I'm not sure that I—

Dustin Grinnell (00:58:03 --> 00:58:03)
Yeah.

Ellen Damski (00:58:04 --> 00:58:22)
It'd be nice if you were patting my head and telling me to go to the light. But what I might really want is like, just give me the drugs because this is hell right now. Absolutely. So I'm not sure that at the end of life— I know compassion obviously matters, but I'm But I think physical comfort too is probably way up there.

Dustin Grinnell (00:58:23 --> 00:58:34)
So we've got a few minutes left. How do we zoom out here? How do we broaden the conversation? We've talked about COVID how this relates to COVID. What insights do we draw from?

Ellen Damski (00:58:34 --> 00:59:24)
Well, I would say with the American fear of death and the process of death and dying, even though I think that has changed somewhat with hospice or whatever, I think one of the One of the interesting, satisfying reasons for studying this, and something I've learned through this passage, is that, you know, when you get that close, I want to say you get to the good stuff. And I don't mean that traily at all. I mean that with reverence and respect for people, for life itself. But I think when we avoid the hard stuff, We miss the possibility of somebody saying at 80 years old that when I was 19 and dying, or the person next to me, was the best time of my life.

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:25 --> 00:59:26)
Because it cuts through, doesn't it?

Ellen Damski (00:59:26 --> 00:59:28)
Cuts through a lot of stupid stuff.

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:29 --> 00:59:35)
Right. The trivialities, the grievances, the daily routines. Fights with the neighbors. You know a lot about that.

Ellen Damski (00:59:36 --> 00:59:36)
Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:37 --> 00:59:42)
And cutting through that gets you to the good stuff. And the good stuff is what?

Ellen Damski (00:59:42 --> 01:00:31)
Oh gosh. You're asking me? You just asked me what the meaning of life is, I think is what you asked. The meaning of life is whatever it is that you find when you get there. And I think that that's what's cool about life. How does that sound for an academic? The cool thing about life is that what you take from it, what you give to other people, what you share is is what really life is all about. I would like to say for a well-lived life. Like, I just read something in the paper today about somebody in the area that died. And the headline was, I think it was the Boston Globe, where it said, "It's worth it to be nice to other people." And that apparently at this person's funeral, who had achieved quite a bit professionally, but what came out was that he was kind.

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:32 --> 01:00:52)
Because kindness, there isn't just an ethical component in terms of societal outcomes. It actually has its own benefits to the self. The Greeks talked about virtue, living a virtuous life is the way to a happy life, the way to eudaimonia, I think it is, the flourishing life. It's its own reward.

Ellen Damski (01:00:52 --> 01:01:29)
Actually, the statue of Trudeau at the Trudeau Sanatorium was done by by— I'm going to skip his name because I'll mispronounce it— the same one that did Mount Rushmore. I mean, that's the stature that Trudeau had. And I'd like to suggest that it might not have been that he was the best doctor. But I think it was because he was the best-loved doctor. And I think that certainly at this point in time, you know, in the age of science and AI, his scientific contributions to some degree don't matter anymore. But what he did does matter.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:29 --> 01:02:02)
[Speaker:TREVOR_BURRUS] You know, there's a corollary here, and I only think about it right now, but Paul Farmer, the Bergamo Women's public health expert who treated TB, passed away a few years ago, and he was beloved. He was beloved around the world for his compassionate care, for his humanitarian work, for just going into places like Haiti and starting a community health center and actually getting into the logistical problems of how do you get people from their distinct villages into the hospital. And there was some corollary between Farmer and Trudeau here. It's this kind of—

Ellen Damski (01:02:02 --> 01:02:37)
Yeah, and I think there are some people, and I've met them, and it's one of those characteristics that it's really hard to get a handle on. But I remember one doctor that he just had a, forgive the use of this very unscientific word, but an aura about him that you just walked in the door, it's like, oh, thank God. You know, so it takes a lot to be a quote unquote "good healer." You know, you can be— well, what's that TV show where, you know, the good doctor? You know, you can be a good doctor and have a lousy bedside manner, or have a lousy—

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:37 --> 01:02:43)
or, you know, and there's infinite varieties of that. And I think each unique—

Ellen Damski (01:02:43 --> 01:02:50)
each experience. I mean, TB, the experience of TB, at that time is a unique experience in and of that time.

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:50 --> 01:02:57)
Yeah. No, I mean, I think Trudeau, it was part scientist, part doctor, part faith healer. And that ability—

Ellen Damski (01:02:57 --> 01:02:58)
That's what I said about the evangelical.

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:58 --> 01:03:01)
Yeah. There was a religious—

Ellen Damski (01:03:01 --> 01:03:05)
I think there was a very deep religious that you had to really believe. You did. You believed.

Dustin Grinnell (01:03:05 --> 01:03:10)
And of course, we know from the placebo effect and just the power of believing in your healthcare provider.

Ellen Damski (01:03:10 --> 01:03:36)
Yeah. But did that really save lives? I mean, then there's that. Well, it activates Well, I've had a lot of doctors ask me, 'cause I've interviewed a lot of doctors through this process. Almost every single one of them has said, "So what do you think?" It's like, "Well, you're the doctor. Did the cure work?" And if it did, what made it work? Was it the fresh air? Was it the good food? Was it the rest? Was it the— It's multifactorial.

Dustin Grinnell (01:03:36 --> 01:03:51)
And yeah, of course, lowering your fight or flight responses, being in a less stressed state. There's something to be said, there's a lot to be said actually about belief, belief in one's outcome and whether or not the healthcare provider can activate that belief.

Dustin Grinnell (01:03:51 --> 01:03:52)
I know.

Ellen Damski (01:03:52 --> 01:04:03)
The only hesitation I have about that is the idea that then we are responsible or not responsible. You can have a really good attitude and not survive, and a lousy attitude and do.

Dustin Grinnell (01:04:04 --> 01:04:08)
I agree. And there's a place for traditional—

Ellen Damski (01:04:09 --> 01:04:49)
A conversation with a doctor about that. When I was being treated for Lyme disease, I actually stayed in school, which I regret. I mean, to some degree, I think I might have gotten better faster if I, you know, not been going to classes, although. And, you know, pretty much everybody else I was treated with were on leaves. And there was one man that came in every day with a suit going to work. And then one day he wasn't in the suit anymore. And nobody said anything, but we knew it meant he just couldn't work anymore. But I said to my doctor one day, because he said, "Oh, I told somebody that we have somebody that's still going to school." And I said, "Don't do that to me or them because it's setting up this false model." And truthfully, I don't think it was the best thing for me to do.

Dustin Grinnell (01:04:50 --> 01:04:52)
Well, we have to wrap up.

Ellen Damski (01:04:52 --> 01:04:54)
Well, thank you. This was very interesting.

Dustin Grinnell (01:04:54 --> 01:04:59)
This was a great conversation. Just very briefly, where can people find your thesis if they want to read it?

Ellen Damski (01:04:59 --> 01:05:09)
Actually, it's online now. Go to Binghamton, put my name, Ellen Damski, Bingerton, B-I-N-G-E-T-O-N, you swear at the sky without the N is how you spell my last name. And Binghamton, it's—

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:10 --> 01:05:11)
The way of life.

Ellen Damski (01:05:12 --> 01:05:13)
A way of life.

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:13 --> 01:05:16)
The Fresh Air Cure in Binghamton, it'll pop up. And I'll put a link to it.

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:16 --> 01:05:27)
But well, thanks for sharing insights from your work. It's fascinating and it has a lot to say about today. And I hope people take something from our conversation. Yeah, thank you.

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:27 --> 01:05:28)
I hope so. All right.

Ellen Damski (01:05:28 --> 01:05:30)
And thank you, Dustin. And for your interest.

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:31 --> 01:05:40)
Thanks for listening to this episode of Curiously. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ellen Damski. Stay tuned for more conversations with people I meet along the way.