SPRINGFIELD | Fear of catching tuberculosis wasn't a concern for Julia Pryor Potter when she worked at the local Palmer Tuberculosis Sanatorium in the early 1940s.
Apparently, that concern was reserved for others on her behalf.
An X-ray and laboratory technician, Potter roomed in the nurses' home at the "San." One morning, she spit up some blood after raising her arms while dressing. Her roommate, a nursing associate and a former tuberculosis patient, insisted that Potter immediately call Dr. George Vernon, the sanatorium's associate director.
"I told her to keep her mouth shut and not say a word," Potter said with a laugh.
Potter, who is 87 and a resident of Springfield Supportive Living, remembers the TB treatments offered at the time.
Today, patients can be treated with several antibiotics for six to nine months. But years ago, they were placed in special hospitals for months or years.
In 1913, when Dr. George Palmer established the Palmer Tuberculosis Sanatorium, an average of 80 people a year died of tuberculosis in Springfield. While Potter worked there from February 1941 through July 1945, the sanatorium served people from all across Illinois.
"The patients became my friends because they were there for a long, long time," said Potter, who added that she enjoyed her 4 1/2 years at the sanatorium.
"I'd go down to their rooms and visit with them," she said. "Throughout the years, I'd write to them. I'd see some of them. I'd visit with some. I went to weddings of some."
During Potter's time at the sanatorium, windows would be open a crack regardless of the weather, and patients had a rest period in the morning and another in the afternoon for a couple of hours.
Potter, whose photo album of her time at Palmer contains pictures of daily life there and of the medical and nursing staff, developed X-rays at the San, a laborious process.
"Now you go in and they take a chest X-ray and within two minutes, they've got the X-rays dried and it's all ready for the doctor to see," she said. "We had developing tanks, and you put these X-rays (in them). They had to be in there for so long and then put them in another process.
"It'd take hours. ... You'd have to hang them on a rack and they'd dry. It would take all day."
