From Evelyn Lander, Perth, Western Australia
I picked up the piece by I. Glenn Cohen and Alex Pearlman on medicines that record when they have been taken (29 September 2018, p 22) at the doctor’s surgery. I was more than mildly interested in their use to ensure antibiotics for tuberculosis are taken.
In 1949, at 20, I was diagnosed with TB and rushed into the then . Treatment didn’t go much further than warm bed baths. My father was then a London taxi driver and took someone to an address near Wigmore Street, where private doctors were concentrated. He asked a doctor, Lee Lander, what could be done for his dying daughter. Lander said he was running an experimental treatment for TB and offered to visit me in hospital.
The next day, I heard him tell my parents of a new drug called streptomycin and ask them to sign a waiver. I was kept in an isolation room with no exercise, but constant visits by Lander and others coming to examine me.
I stayed in the hospital for three months, then went to Frimley Sanatorium. I was eventually weaned off both medicine and injections and allowed to exercise, but was still given the old treatment of to paralyse my diaphragm. As you can see, I survived.
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