A Historical Lesson in Disease Containment

When Ruth Reed fell ill, she left behind her home, her job as a teacher, and her husband and young son to enter a contained medical facility. She had a highly contagious disease without a known cure, and isolated from the rest of the world, she wrote, she lived a “singularly serene … half-life.” Her days of “pajama-clad indifference” were a highly regimented cycle of rest and nourishing meals, overseen by trained caretakers operating with “white-coated efficiency.” She learned to find solace in the rotating cast of sick women who became her friends, in her locker “full of good books,” and in “the hills and trees beyond her window.”

“Within these walls I am secure from joy,—yes,” she reflected. “But from pain also.” The tuberculosis sanatoriums, as she