Tuberculosis, the Adirondacks, and coming of age for thoracic surgery

"The Captain of all these men of death," wrote John Bunyan in 1680, "that came against him to take him away, was the Consumption, for it was that that brought him down to the grave." Until the twentieth century tuberculosis, or the Consumption, was the foremost cause of death among adults. It had not been recognized as a specific infectious process until 1882. The sanatorium movement for segregation and treatment of tuberculous patients originated in the late nineteenth century. Locations in the mountains were thought to be especially favorable, for the sake of fresh air, sunshine, and the aromas of pine and spruce. Long before the epidemic of lung cancer, or the possibilities of correction for cardiac disease, development of thoracic surgery was closely intertwined with the history of the sanatoriums. All of them had disappeared, however, soon after the middle of the twentieth century.