Madonna Swan - Tuberculosis and Life at The Indian Sanatorium

Tuberculosis and Life At The Indian Sanatorium

Her brother Kermit, who had introduced Madonna to the man whom she would later marry, was wounded in World War II and had also contracted malaria. Kermit died in the spring of 1944. Misfortune followed Madonna as she returned to Immaculate Conception in the fall of 1944 and received the official diagnosis of tuberculosis (chanhu sica – bad lung in the Lakota language). TB was a huge stigma in this time period. The Indians considered TB akin to a social disease. Indian homes that had a person with TB living in them were quarantined, and a red tag was attached to them. The tag was later removed when the person with TB died or went to the sanatorium.

The treatment for tuberculosis during this time was isolation (hence the sanatoria) and artificial pneumothorax or lung compression. In December 1944 Madonna Swan was taken to the Sioux Sanatorium in Rapid City, SD. During her many years at the San, as it was referred to, Madonna was treated for her TB by the placement of bean bags on her chest while lying flat on the back for hours on end. This was the way that pneumothorax or lung compression was accomplished. The thought being that the collapsing of the lung would kill the mycobacterium tuberculosis by eliminating the air which the bacterium needed to grow, an idea supported by observations by the Italian physician Carlo Forlanini. This treatment did not however provide a cure for Madonna Swan.

Another important part of the treatment regime for TB was enforced rest, together with a proper diet and a well-regulated hospital life, these were not, unfortunately, available to those at Indian sanatoria. The living conditions at Indian sanatoria were not favorable to recovery. The food was unvaried and substandard and infested with rodents and their droppings according to Madonna Swan’s telling.

Even though the drug streptomycin had been developed and shown to kill mycobacterium tuberculosis, this medicine was not available to Indians who were patients at Indian sanatoria, at the time of Madonna Swan’s confinement. Both the poor living conditions and the lack of medicine were common, as health care for the American Indian was substandard due to discrimination.

In the sixth year of her confinement in the sanatorium Madonna’s younger brother Orby, who also had tuberculosis, died. He had begged his sister to have their parents take him home from the sanatorium so that he could die at home. He was taken home and died later the same day. After being denied the opportunity to attend her brother’s funeral, and the thought of dying in the sanatorium added to Madonna’s desire to leave, which she did without permission and returned to her family home. Facing the threat of quarantine her father refused to return Madonna to the Indian sanatorium. Instead he wrote to an old school friend, Henry Standing Bear, who advised them to see a doctor in Pierre and gain admittance to the “white” TB sanatorium, Sanator at Custer, SD. This was not simple, again due to discrimination because they were Indians the authorities denied her admittance to Sanator, telling them that they had to go back to the Sioux San. Madonna’s father James Hart Swan would not accept this denial and he gained an audience with the governor of South Dakota, Judge Sigurd Anderson. James Swam explained their situation and the governor, who considered himself somewhat of a pioneer for human rights, understood that American Indians were not treated fairly, arranged for Madonna to be admitted to Sanator.