HKB
sort of caste among the "lungers," depending mainly upon their amount of ready cash. Some had plain "consumption," while others had only "tuberculosis." Many had "lung trouble," "catarrh," "bronchitis," and--"neurasthenia."
The patients in the sanitariums were graded. The most advanced cases were called the "B. L. B's."--"The Busted Lung Brigade." It seems that there is no condition too grim for joke and jest. On all sides there were coughing and expectorating and suffering and dying, sufficient to dismay the stoutest heart--and I a victim myself, I thought.
I heard that the torrid southwest was the ideal climate for tuberculosis and thither I went. I visited a few places in this hot southwestern country where it is alleged that consumptives in all stages soon recover and grow fat. I soon learned that these alluring reports should be taken with the usual quantity of saline matter. This boosting of climate for invalids, I found, was mainly the work of land sharks, railroads, hotel and sanitarium people, and a few medical men who were crafty or misguided. This climate may be ideal in being germ-free, but where it is so hot and dry that even germs can't eke out an existence, it is also a trifle trying on the tender-foot consumptive. I found that the bad water and sand-storms in many localities, coupled with his homesickness, more than off-set all the good results the climate could otherwise bring to the sufferer.
In nearly every room I occupied while in this Mecca for consumptives, the place had been rendered vacant by my predecessor having moved out--in a box. I did not stay in one locality very long, but visited a number of places that were exploited as being the land of promise for all afflicted with this agonizing disease. Everywhere I went I saw hundreds of victims being shorn of their money and deriving meager, if any, benefits. The native consumptives went elsewhere in search of health, it being another case of "green hills far away." Many went so far as the State of Maine.
Every State in the Union has at some time been lauded as the favored spot for the cure of consumption, but, after all, it seems as mythical as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some climates may be better than others for those ill with this disease, but if you are a poor, homesick sufferer--a stranger in a strange land--I doubt whether the best climate on earth can vie with the comforts of home, surrounded by those nearest and dearest to you, and whose kindly administrations are not to be regarded as a case of "love's labor lost."
I returned home "much improved in health." Don't think I've had a tuberculous symptom since.