The other respiratory illness

While the world is gripped with the Coronavirus, here is a post about another respiratory illness that one of my family members lived through, tuberculosis.

Family member name: Eleanor Webber
Tree branch: Webber
Lifetime: 1921-2010
Relation: My great-aunt (my father's father's sister)

Unfortunately I never spoke with Auntie Eleanor about her ordeal with tuberculosis.  All I know is a couple stories from my dad and some entries from Eleanor's mother's diary.

Eleanor's mother (my great grandmother), Mattie, kept a little diary of important events in her life. One was November 16, 1942: "E. goes to Channing Home"

Mattie's diary

Channing Home was originally named Channing Street Home for Sick and Destitute Women.  (Source: Brigham and Women's Hospital) Founded in 1857 as a refuge for poor women, it later became a nationally known center for the treatment of women with tuberculosis.  As my father recalls, Eleanor spent years (perhaps seven years!) in an institution for her treatment of TB.  Perhaps Channing Home was that institution.

The treatment for TB involved complete and horizontal bed rest and, believe it or not, social distancing and separation from family, especially children.  

A screen shot from Google Maps of the address of Channing Home.

Also from Mattie's diary: "April 30, 1946 - Dr. Overholt at Deaconess removes E's lung.  Successful. Oxygen tent."

Who was Dr. Overholt? In the 1930's he performed the first successful removal of a right lung on a cancer patient.  Eleanor had one of the best doctors in the country.  Here is the link to his obituary in The New York Times.

Poor Eleanor.  She perhaps started her treatment at age 21 and had her lung removed at age 25.  Basically her 20's were gone.  How sad to spend some of the prime years of your life in a hospital, and some in an oxygen tent. Thankfully, she recovered and lived a long life.  She was a sweet, beloved piano teacher in her hometown, Needham, Massachusetts.  She passed away just one week short of her 89th birthday.

Mattie and Eleanor Webber