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Discovery
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by a mycobacterium called tubercle bacilli. In over ninety-percent of the cases, the disease infects the lungs first, where it attacks and kills cells, forming pus-filled clusters called tubercles. If untreated, the tubercles grow into ulcerous cavities and the infection can spread into the nervous system (causing tuberculosis meningitis), lymphatic system (causing scrofula of the neck), the skin (causing lupus), and bones and joints (causing Pott’s disease of the spine, in some cases resulting in a deformity referred to as a “hunchback”). In its most serious form (“miliary tuberculosis”), it can kill within days, but in most cases it follows a “chronic, protracted course,” meaning that the victims of the disease often lived with it for decades.
Public Response, Treatment, Seeking Health in the West
Koch’s discovery that tuberculosis was caused by a communicable infection of tubercle bacilli unleashed a massive public health campaign to end the epidemic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These efforts took two primary forms: those focused on containing the spread of the contagion throughout society and those focused on developing ways to slow or stop the spread of the infection in the body. In both cases, efforts to contain the disease required exerting immense control over the behavior and the bodies of those afflicted.
Kaspare Cohn Hospital
While the boosters are pleased, Jewish community leaders are not -- ex. In 1900, the B’nai B’rith Messenger warns that “immense hoards of Jewish immigrants” were importing “immoral and unsanitary conditions” to Los Angeles – in 1902 BBM says the city was “overrun with people who have come from all parts of the world in quest of health, with little health and little means” – as appear in Emily Abel pp. 36-37]
Move to Boyle Heights
Cohn’s efforts to build the hospital and provide treatment, and even a cure, for the city’s tuberculars contradicted directly with the focus of the city’s public health responses to the disease. Indeed, while the policy demands of public health focused the efforts of city and state governments on preventing new cases of the disease and stopping the spread of the contagion, the Sanatorium’s purpose was to implement a cure and provide treatment. These conflicts came to a head in very public ways. [p. 180 Rothman]
The Jewish Consumption Relief Association
In 1912, two tuberculars died on the street – angers many who feel the JSSB’s policies are elitist and top-down – sure there’s budgetary reason why they do so, but like LA County charities, consumptives who apply for relief were often given train tickets home rather than assistance [cite Abel, p. 35 and that dissertation on the JSSB]
The Sanatorium Controversy
Jan. 15th, 1915 BBM – on the SKEPTICS – “voice a protest against such acrimonious methods.. I beg to remind the projectors that there was a consumptive relief society in the field at the time, which was endorsed by the federation and is under the management of one of our pioneer philanthropists who has the confidence of the Jewish Community. There was serious doubts in the minds of many as to the wisdom of burdening the people with another expensive asylum. We have an orphans homes, a hospital, a childrens’ day nursery, etc. It was reasonable to be skeptical, in spite of advice and warning the project was carried forward. No one could have been more gratified than the skeptics…”
The JCRA Sanatorium becomes the City of Hope
BBM Oct. 22, 1915 – “There are many of our friends, who believe the sanatorium can be something like a camp, having a few canvas tents. This we wish to say, that our little institution is practically a little township, a little city for itself; many of the patients love to call it, “THE TOWN OF HOPE.”
The growth of Los Angeles’ economy and population in the early twentieth century was owed largely to an aggressive advertising campaign led by the city’s civic and business elites. These boosters showcased the city’s natural beauty, its moderate climate and its fertile soil, casting Los Angeles as a modern metropolis where dirty, overcrowded slums where replaced by sun-soaked single-family homes. They also emphasized the therapeutic effects of the city’s climate, offering stories of thousands of residents whose ailments had been cured in the “balmy skies” of Southern California. Their efforts attracted over 500,000 new residents to the city between 1890 and 1920, including over 50,000 Jews. But rather than drawing masses of young, able-bodied workers, the boosters also attracted thousands of new residents suffering from the “white plague” (tuberculosis) and other chronic lung diseases, migrants whom Los Angeles’ business leaders and civic elites found less desirable. Because medical professionals lacked treatment for tuberculosis until the advent of antibiotics in 1946, they often sent their patients to seek relief in the warm, dry climates of the West, and by some estimates as many as one quarter of the city’s new arrivals had come to Southern California to get well in the health resorts, spas and hospitals of the “sanitarium belt.” Upon arriving in Los Angeles, these “tuberculars” often found it difficult to find housing, couldn’t work because of their illnesses, and were hopelessly dependent on local charities and relief programs.
This exhibit will showcase the ways that the Jewish community of Los Angeles responded to the increasing number of tuberculars who flooded the city in the early 20th century. It will highlight three institutions that were built to serve the needs of the sick - Kaspare Cohn Hospital (which later became Cedars of Lebanon Hospital), the Mt. Sinai Home for Incurables, and the Jewish Consumptive Relief Association’s Sanatorium in Duarte - tracing how these institutions grew into two of the city’s largest and most important health care centers in Los Angeles today, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the City of Hope. It will examine the following questions: How did the contending interests of businessmen seeking to grow the state, public health advocates seeking to prevent the spread of the disease, and Jewish community leaders seeking to support their fellow Jews influence responses to the tuberculosis epidemic in Southern California? How did anxieties about race, class and immigration impact both public and private responses to the disease? How did rivalries and tensions within the Jewish community express themselves in the strategies of the institutions’ creators? How did scientific advancements in the treatment of the disease affect the hospitals’ growth and development? This exhibit will show that these institutions developed in the matrix of science and technology surrounding the treatment of tuberculosis, public health policy and social attitudes about disease and contagion.
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