Open Window

Mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents ... both the young and the old, the rich and the poor ... went away in the early years of TB sanatoriums to recover at hospitals where, even in winter, they slept by open windows. Patients sometimes woke to snow and ice on their thick covering of blankets, frozen water in their glasses, and frozen urine in their pots. Today, while tuberculosis casts its sinister shadow back to earlier times by reemerging in new, drug-resistant forms and infecting one-fourth of the world's population, Open Window takes you inside the Lake Julia Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Northern Minnesota where the author's family once lived and worked-a place where a whole community was created and bound together by a bacterium called the tubercle bacillus. This collective biography introduces you to the community made up of: - The determined Dr. Mary Ghostley, who, in the early 1900s, some called a witch for studying medicine - Dedicated employees like the author's parents who met and fell in love at the San- Courageous nurses like Thora Bakken and Wilma Watts, who risked their own health to help others - Patients, like valedictorian- hopeful Art Holmstrom, who worked hard at doing nothing, hoping their treatment would allow them to return home rather than leaving in a wooden box. It is not uncommon when you delve into family history to run into the words "consumption," "tuberculosis," or the "White Plague." After reading "Open Window," you will have a better understanding of the struggles of family members who were stricken with this illness.Open Window's more than 135 photos make it a visual history as well as a compelling story about the Lake Julia Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Northern Minnesota.