Phoenix Housed Many Tuberculosis Patients

One prominent thoroughfare running through the Phoenix, Arizona real estate is named ?Bethany Home Road? ? but is there, or was there, a place actually called ?Bethany Home??

Yes, folks, indeed, there was ? and it had something to do with a very nasty disease called tuberculosis, or TB.

TB was, unfortunately, fairly prevalent back in the day ? it was also extremely debilitating, often fatal, and highly contagious. The disease presented itself with a hacking cough which made it critical to keep sufferers isolated to ensure their coughing didn?t infect others. Ergo, tuberculosis sanitariums, or hospitals/clinics, were used to isolate patients.

As Arizona Oddities describes it, tuberculosis was also big business in Arizona. In the early 1900s, tuberculosis patients routinely were sent to Arizona to be cured by the clean, dry air. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn?t, but since antibiotics weren?t around, a hot, dry climate was considered one of the best potential curatives for not only TB, but also for various allergies and lung-related ailments such as asthma.

The Sunnyslope area ? which then was well north of the Phoenix city limits ? was the site of many tuberculosis sanitariums, and Scottsdale was actually once known as ?White City? because of all the white tents where tuberculosis patients lived. Between historians Marshall Trimble and, Dick Lynch, Arizona Oddities explains it this way.

?Bethany? is an ancient town near Jerusalem at the foot of the Mount of Olives and a religious organization appropriated the name for a tuberculosis sanitarium operated in the early 1900s. It was located near what is now 15th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. Voila ? hence, the name.

As an aside, according to Enotes.com, streptomycin, an original antibiotic, was produced in quantity in 1944, helped to treat such lethal diseases as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, bubonic plague and bacterial meningitis. Although streptomycin saved numerous lives, it was eventually found to be unsafe and removed from the market in favor of newer, safer antibiotics, such as sulfa drugs and penicillin.

As our late, great friend Paul Harvey would say, and now you know the rest of the story.