Arthur Allen
Weyburn Mental Hospital, closed in 2004 and demolished in 2009
DUST STORMS black dirt, white plague: notes on air-borne particulates
hospitals | tuberculosis by arthur allen
sanatoria ventilation contagion proximity infection
Nurse Norah Hamill wrote in hospital memoirs– If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget those dust storms. The floors, the bed sheets, our uniforms, everything would be covered with black silt. We tried to block the windows with wet towels but nothing helped. It was pure misery for the staff and patients. 1 Confinement of people with tuberculosis, the White Plague, was difficult at any time and place. Sanatoriums were in operation in Saskatchewan after 1917, but under non-segregated and crowded conditions, mental hospitals experienced a ten-fold increase in the disease compared to its public incidence. In 1924 there were 85 active cases in the Weyburn hospital, in a total population of 728. The consumption of unpasteurised milk aggravated the problem until the hospital treated its own supply after 1930. A dozen airing verandahs were closed in, vented and heated. Used as wards for tubercular patients, capacity was thereby increased by 150 beds, but infected patients were still not well separated from the main population. TB, from Tubercle Bacillus , is a primarily airborne disease. Pulmonary tuberculosis causes patients to cough, sneeze and spit, releasing bacteria-laden saliva which attaches to everything within reach. Inside the building during a wind storm, dust loaded with bacteria was unstoppable. It floated through the dayrooms and corridors, was breathed in by everyone, and travelled everywhere on hands and feet. Tuberculosis patients were eventually moved to a separate 150-bed annex built in 1937, but the disease was hard to beat. Restricting traffic to and from the annex helped but it was not until 1953, with antibiotic drugs and new X-ray equipment that the tide was turned. In 1963 the hospital was declared free of active cases of the White Plague.
Mental hospitals on the prairies were sandblasted by dust storms in the 1930s, the dirty thirties of drought and the Great Depression.The Weyburn asylum was severely hit; in the dust bowl of southern Saskatchewan the building was vulnerable to infiltration of ‘blow dirt’, rich black topsoil that lifted with the wind and found every crevice in the walls of the hospital. Once inside, the airborne dust created a medical disaster. The civil service Public Service Monthly , May 1920, announced the construction of a new mental hospital near the town of Weyburn – the design is so attractive and the building so well proportioned that it is difficult to realize its size and capacity until one traverses the long corridors and spacious, sunny apartments...the building is most attractive, sunny and cheerful, while admirably adapted for its purpose as a hospital for the mentally ill. Contrary to official euphemism, the hospital became a cheerless place, a catch-all shelter for people with mental illness, alcoholism, epilepsy and developmental and physical disabilities. Tubercular patients were included, and were not well isolated from the general population. Staff noted the difficulties of multi-function operations in the institution, located in a region of soaring population where immigrants often brought sickness or disability with them. A building on open farmland, ventilated by opening windows, was an unfortunate design for the control of air quality. The Weyburn asylum was three- and four-storeys high, 800 feet long. On the ploughed and treeless farmland it took the full force of the wind during storms that lasted for days. Fourteen hundred loosely fitted, sliding sash wooden windows allowed blow dirt into the wards.
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