Chasing The Cure In New Mexico: Tuberculosis And The Quest For Health [Hardcover]

This book tells the story of the thousands of health seekers who journeyed to New Mexico from 1880 to 1940 seeking a cure for tuberculosis (TB), the leading killer in the United States at the time. By 1920 such health seekers represented an estimated 10 percent of New Mexicos population. The influx of lungers as they were calledmany of whom remained in New Mexicowould play a critical role in New Mexicos struggle for statehood and in its growth. Nearly sixty sanatoriums were established around the state, laying the groundwork for the states current health-care system. Among New Mexicos prominent lungers were artists Will Shuster and Carlos Vierra, who came to heal and stayed to paint. Bronson Cutting, brought to Santa Fe on a stretcher in 1910, became the influential publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican and a powerful U.S Senator. Others included William R. Lovelace and Edgar T. Lassetter, founders of the Lovelace Clinic, as well as Senator Clinton P. Anderson, poet Alice Corbin Henderson, architect John Gaw Meem, aviator Katherine Stinson, and Dorothy McKibben, gatekeeper for the Manhattan Project. New Mexicos most infamous outlaw, Billy the Kid, first arrived in New Mexico when his mother, Catherine Antrim, sought treatment in Silver City.

In this memoir, Harlow describes his life growing up in Washington state, service in the US Army during World War II, college years, and his fifty-year career as a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.