Edward Livingston Trudeau (1848–1915)

Abstract

WHEN he was a student at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, Edward Livingston Trudeau, who was born on October 5, 1848, was taught to regard tuberculosis as an incurable disease. When, therefore, the celebrated physician Edward G. Janeway in 1873 diagnosed extensive tuberculosis in his left lung, his patient, who had recently graduated and married and whose brother had died of the same disease, felt he was under sentence of death and gave up his practice to spend his last days in the Adirondack Mountains. To his and everyone else‘s surprise he recovered, and in 1884 established the open-air Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium—the first in the United States. In the isolation of a primitive forest, badly crippled and single-handed, Trudeau preached and practised the gospel of fresh air and extolled the virtues of rest. Having read a translation of Koch‘s classic paper on the etiology of tuberculosis, he built himself a modest laboratory in his own home. Out of its ashes sprung the present Saranac Laboratory—the first of its kind in the United States. Trudeau wrote little on clinical subjects ; but his laboratory studies are contained in a large number of valuable papers, including experiments on immunity and on the effect of fresh air on tuberculous rabbits. He was the first president of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. His optimism and charm, endeared him to all his patients, perhaps the most famous of whom was Robert Louis Stevenson.