Visible from the elevated curve of the Peripheral Ring, on its way to Xochimilco, the gigantic crepe of the mourning hospital of the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases, whose symbol evokes the tree structure of the pulmonary alveoli, is yet another example of how we Mexicans seem to be experts in doing things wrong, but from the beginning.
In the thirties of the last century, Mexican architecture was covered in glory: within the vast framework of health construction and care for a then endemic and serious disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, whose fatality in one year killed ten a thousand people, when the population was much smaller (not like now when 36 thousand died from another lung disease, do not even reach the front page), the hospital for people with TB and other contagious diseases was built in the distant town of Huipulco of the respiratory system.
The proximity of the town of Huipulco, where the hospital was installed, invited alpine reflections and, like someone reading Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”, a sanitarium was designed with the windows permanently open. The icy wind would aid in the annihilation of the bacilli discovered by Mr. Koch in 1882, if memory does not fail. In this way, no one died of tuberculosis, they died of cold.
The medical history says:
“… between July 1932 and June 1933 the five anti-tuberculosis dispensaries in the capital treated 1,730 patients, enrolled 6,712 individuals, performed 7,661 radioscopies and 2,404 smear microscopes, applied 90,510 injections of calcium chloride and bromide (Cosío Villegas, 1937, p.236-237), for which it was ensured that “the patient who falls into the dispensary … becomes addicted to drugs” (Escobedo Arias, 1936, p.40), individuals diagnosed with curable TB could not be admitted to any sanatorium.
“In addition, those diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis were sent to the incurable ward of the General Hospital.
“These pavilions, long known as” Las Islas Marías “(name of a penitentiary colony installed in 1905 on the islands with that name on the coast of the state of Nayarit), were described by Ismael Cosío Villegas, who directed them between 1930 and 1936, as follows:
“… The sick did not wear Hospital uniforms, but the poor clothes they came with; they cooked in their rooms; they sunbathed naked; they used different medicines that their relatives brought them and they were not examined by the doctors, because at that time they experienced panic at the possibility of contagion of the consumption “(Cosío Villegas, 1983, p.9).
“In addition to this, Cosío Villegas added that” both the doctors, as well as the nurses and laborers who committed some fault, were sent, as punishment, to work for three months in those wards “(p.9)”.
As you can see, improvisation and the method of error and success have been permanently present in the health administration in this country. Everything to the right ones, everything there goes.
An example of this is the following:
“… (It was necessary), articulate the following strategies to prevent infections:
“Preventive, such as isolation, dispensary technology, hygiene and social prophylaxis (examination, visits); diagnostics, such as the laboratory, the X-ray test, clinical observation; therapeutic, such as biological (tuberculin, BCG); and surgical ones, such as artificial pneumothorax “, as has been highlighted in different historical investigations …”
Pneumothorax, like now the ventilator or ventilator, was already needed. And we still can’t manufacture them.
We prefer to cover the white house jerk with rose petals, rather than fund serious, serial research and manufacturing.
But let’s go back to the windows (Bioarchitecture. Study on the construction of the Sanatorium for Tuberculous of Huipulco. Natalia De la Rosa / Daniel Vargas Parra Master in Art History, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UNAM.
“… The treatment pavilions were made up of large windows, which formed the façade, built thanks to the concrete frames to support each window as a buttress. In this way, they could remain wide open, with rest beds in which the patient took sun baths, while the room received constant ventilation… ”
Today in that place the already mentioned institute works. Their sickness and staff burnout conditions are unimaginable. Six months of hard work in which everything has reached a limit: endurance, patience, understanding, while everything is needed. Supplies, staff, time to live.
And the epidemic continues.
Twitter: @CardonaRafael
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