早年我也曾梦想做一个医生，但是终于没有足够的勇气作出这样的选择：并非没有勇气面对痛苦的病人，而是没有勇气承担身陷现实医疗体系的压力。但是Dr. E. L. Trudeau 的人生格言我定将牢记。
A concise introduction of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau:
Saranac Lake led North America in establishing and institutionalizing tuberculosis treatment and research. In 1873, young Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, physician, husband, father, and tuberculosis victim discovered the region’s health-giving properties. At that time, Saranac Lake consisted of only a few hundred loggers and wilderness guides. Anticipating death, Trudeau went to Saranac Lake to die surrounded by memories of youthful vacations spent fishing, hunting, and exploring in the mountains. Instead of dying, Trudeau revived and regained a remarkable degree of health in a surprisingly short time. This pattern repeated itself several times over a period of six years. Each time Trudeau left Saranac Lake, his tuberculosis recurred. Each time Trudeau returned to Saranac Lake, he regained strength and spirit. In 1876, against all advice, the urbane Doctor Trudeau of New York City moved himself, his wife, Charlotte, their two infants, and his medical practice to this remote Adirondack wilderness.
A naturally curious intellectual, Trudeau’s interest in tuberculosis went beyond his own experience. He gathered information on developments in Europe?the emergent sanatoria movement, and Koch’s claims of isolating the tubercle bacillus in 1882. In 1884, with approximately four hundred dollars donated by sympathetic friends, Trudeau founded North America’s first successful TB sanatorium?the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium3?to provide “suitable accommodations in the Adirondacks for patients of moderate means.” This first cottage, called “Little Red,” consisted of “one room, fourteen by eighteen, and a porch so small that only one patient could sit out at a time. Little Red was furnished with a wood stove, two cot-beds, a washstand, two chairs and a kerosene lamp.”4 The first two patients were Alice and Mary Hunt, sisters who worked in the factories of New York City. Local workers hauled water up the hill from the Saranac River. Little Blue and Little Green soon followed Little Red. Relying on philanthropy and good will, Trudeau acquired land, built cottages, trained caregivers, instituted research, and followed his lifelong credo “to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.” Trudeau contributed his medical services for free.
In addition to founding a sanatorium, Edward Trudeau became the first person in North America to isolate the tubercle bacillus. Trudeau and his colleagues opened the first research facility in the world devoted solely to TB, founded a school of nursing dedicated to educating nurses in the care of TB patients, established the first institutionalized occupational therapy facility6 in the world, and supported the development of other local curing initiatives. The “university of tuberculosis” incorporated patient care, scientific research, medical training, patient rehabilitation, and community-based healthcare?in many ways an exemplary model of cooperation based on humanitarian medicine. The vision and methods of Edward Livingston Trudeau and his colleagues attended to the psychological as well as the physical and reflect, in many ways, today’s turn towards holistic medicine. E. L.Trudeau ultimately succumbed to TB in 1915, his death no doubt hastened by years of exhausting dedication to conquering the disease that claimed him. Trudeau lived long enough, however, to firmly establish “America’s magic mountain,” a remarkable community of healing founded on tuberculosis.
(Cited from The Discourse of Disease: “Patient Writes” at the “University of Tuberculosis”)
(The Old man on the right-hand side is Dr. E. L. Trudeau. Cited from http://library.paulsmiths.edu/PastPerfect/exhibit3/e30007b.htm)
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