316 A HISTORY OF NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION 



the institution with a splendid library. From the laboratory 

 many valuable contributions have gone out into the world and 

 have done honor to American tuberculosis research. In 1908, 

 on the occasion of Trudeau's sixtieth birthday, his former pupils 

 and assistants presented to him a Festschrift containing the re- 

 sults of work done in the laboratory. Trudeau's own careful 

 studies on the use of tuberculin as a therapeutic agent have done 

 much to show that its indiscriminate use in the hands of inexperi- 

 enced practitioners is dangerous. His conservatism and pains- 

 taking care in all his investigations made him the ideal phthisio- 

 therapist. 



But if the history of the laboratory, of which Trudeau remained 

 director until his death, is interesting and far-reaching, the story 

 of the sanatorium itself is of as great if not greater importance. 

 It was in 1884 that the guides and residents of Saranac Lake 

 donated money enough to buy five acres of land near the village 

 in a spot selected by Trudeau because, as he used to say, he could 

 always light his pipe there, showing that it was shelteied from the 

 strong winds by the conformation of the hills and woods. Two 

 little shacks were erected. They constituted the nucleus of what 

 is to-day one of the greatest and most splendidly equipped insti- 

 tutions for the treatment of the tuberculous poor and those in 

 moderate circumstances in the United States, if not in the world, 

 the Trudeau Sanatorium. 



Although a great admirer of the teachings of Brehmer as to out- 

 door life, and of Dettweiler's theory of the rest cure, Trudeau 

 never favored the one-house system characteristic of the German 

 sanatorium. It is to him that we are indebted for what is known 

 as the cottage plan sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculous 

 patients. Over 40 cottages accommodating from four to six 

 patients each, an administration building, a library, a nurses' 

 home, and a church, called "St. Luke the Beloved Physician," 

 besides the laboratory already mentioned, to-day comprise the 

 institution. It has served as a model for many of the existing 

 sanatoria now in operation in the United States. The patients 

 who, passing through the institution, have gained their health and 

 been restored to their earning capacity, thanks to the genius of 

 Trudeau, can be numbered by the thousands. How Trudeau, 



