Rest Cure
“Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state—indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly.”
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Altitude Therapy at the Sanatorium for the Treatment of Tuberculosis
For decades, sanatorium treatment in mountain climates was regarded as the standard therapy for pulmonary tuberculosis. In Davos, the physician Alexander Spengler began to offer altitude therapies in the 1860s. Within a few years, the mountain village developed into a flourishing health resort. Luxury sanatoriums – such as those described by Thomas Mann in the Zauberberg – were aimed at a wealthy international clientele. The cure included hours of resting in the open-air combined with a rich diet.
What Tuberculosis did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture
Patients resting on cane recliners
1892
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, specialist institutions such as sanatoria and asylums were established. In these, patients could be separated and isolated from the community and provided with the control and management of specific medical conditions such as tuberculosis and lunacy. At the start of this period, tuberculosis was a disease closely associated with the rapid growth of industrialization and a poorly nourished urban working class who lived in insalubrious, overcrowded conditions. By the early twentieth century, despite attempts by reforming socialist organizations such as the Garden City movement in England or the Life Reform movement in Germany to introduce healthier housing, these conditions had changed little. As the disease was more prevalent in younger men and women of working age, the financial drain on the European economy was considerable. By this time, research and treatment of the disease had coincided with the advent of modernism. This was a cultural movement that in architecture and applied design involved the integration of form with social purpose. It also attempted to create a new classless and hygienic lifestyle with socialist values.