Connecting the DOTS: Unprecedented Approach to Ensure Compliance. This is the fourth in our series “The Sanatorium Files.” We round out the series with this post on the most recent development in the treatment of TB: an unusual and unprecedented public health program to ensure compliance with the TB drug regimen called directly observed therapy, short course (DOTS).

This is the third installment in our series “The Sanatorium Files.” Without the scientific understanding needed to develop effective therapeutics to fight tuberculosis in its many forms, doctors, patients, families and charlatans looking to make a profit tried a wide range of treatments to offer any hope of relief and a cure. One of the most universal and pervasive approaches for people with the most common pulmonary form of the disease was that of rest and fresh air for patients, leading to the creation and proliferation of sanatoriums, or long-term TB treatment hospitals/resorts in Europe and the U.S.

The Diagnosis Dilemma: How Could They Treat It If They Didn’t Know What It Was?
Until the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1944, sufferers of tuberculosis and their physicians throughout recorded history did not know that the diverse collection of maladies and symptoms they fought were all different manifestations of the same disease1:

pulmonary tuberculosis, also [...]