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Seymour Farber developed tuberculosis during his fourth year of medical school at Harvard and came to Saranac Lake from June 1935 to May 1938. He cured at Trudeau Sanatorium.
Excerpt from letter sent to Janet Dudones regarding the 1987 TB Reunion, February 13, 1987
"As a fourth year medical student at Harvard I developed tuberculosis and spent from June, 1935 to May, 1938 at Trudeau. Following that I returned and received my M.D. degree in the field of chest diseases. In the 1940s I became Chief of the T.B. and Chest Disease Service in the San Francisco General Hospital which was a part of the University of California San Francisco where I was a Clinical Professor of Medicine, a Dean and finally Vice Chancellor. Under my direction as Vice Chancellor was the Department of Continuing Education in Health Services and many major symposia and reunions such as you are planning were presented to health professionals and lay groups.
I remember Ed Worthington very well as I do many others and it would be a great pleasure to see many of the "old timers" again. I realize that my time of treatment at Saranac Lake was a major influence in my career and I also realize that the work done there established the accepted treatment of tuberculosis throughout the United States before the advent of antimicrobial agents. I recall, as a young physician, visiting the Gaylor [sic] Farm Sanitarium and knowing already where everything was to be located since it was an almost exact duplicate of Trudeau. The Saranac Lake sanitarium [sic] was copied again and again.
I have a collection of photographs that I will try to locate of many of the great medical figures of that time such as Dr. Gardner, the pioneer in industrial chest diseases, Dr. Heise, Chief of Trudeau Sanitarium [sic], Dr. Packard, leading specialist at Saranac Lake, and Dr. Samson who became a foremost chest radiologist without have [sic] an M.D. degree. He later received his Ph.D. after having made major contributions in the field of radiology. I remember reviewing some of the x-ray plates which were preserved in a safe place at Trudeau because they were highly inflammable. I found it extraordinary how very perceptive the physicians were as they learned more and more about the shadows and their interpretation in the x-rays."
