Saving Children From the White Plague: The Marion County Tuberculosis Association's Crusade Against Tuberculosis, 1911-1936

Abstract

In 1910, tuberculosis ranked as the leading cause of death in Indianapolis. A year later in 1911 physicians and lay members of the Marion County public joined the burgeoning American anti-tuberculosis movement. These men and women formed a voluntary health organization to combat the disease called the Marion County Tuberculosis Association (MCTA). The MCTA ran a variety of public education campaigns to teach people of all ages about the causes of, treatments for, and proper preventive measures to take against tuberculosis. It lobbied Indianapolis and Marion County governments to open TB clinics and a county tuberculosis sanatorium so that consumptives, as tuberculosis patients were called, had access to medical care and so that the spread of the disease could be checked. The organization also cooperated with other groups to fight tuberculosis including local agencies, the Indiana Board of Health, the Indiana Tuberculosis Association (ITA), and the National Tuberculosis Association (NTA). One aspect of the MCTA’s activities came to dominate its mission and resources within a few years of its establishment, that of child health education. In this emphasis the association differed from other organizations in the anti-tuberculosis movement that recognized the need to improve child health but never designated it as the number one priority like the MCTA. This thesis will examine the first twenty-five years of the MCTA to analyze how and why the organization elevated child health and child health education to such a high priority as a means of controlling and eradicating tuberculosis in Indianapolis and Marion County.