LIBERTY, NY — It’s estimated that tuberculosis (also known by its medical abbreviation, TB, or consumption) killed one billion people worldwide over the past two centuries. It was a scourge greater than that of AIDS, polio, typhoid, Spanish influenza and black plague combined. Comparable only to leprosy in scope and consequence, the similarities are striking. Both communicable wasting diseases struck all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. Because cause and cure were unknown, both required quarantine, with lifelong stigma for victims and families alike, a situation that was alleviated only with the advent of widespread antibiotic use in the 1930s.

It was TB that put Liberty on the map. Or so a ragtag band of truth seekers was told by Sullivan County historian John Conway and architect Robert Dadras as they explored two iconic Catskills institutions: the Loomis Sanitarium and Grossinger’s Hotel. Sponsored by the Liberty Museum, the August 26 adventure purported to show a dynamic between the disease and the rise and fall of 20th century Catskills tourism.

Standing in front of a massive three-story mock-Tudor-cum-alpine lodge that served as an intake center for the newly diagnosed during the sanitarium’s operation, from 1896 to 1942, Conway told the group that this building, like others in the complex, was designed for open-air therapy, the central element of climatological treatment practiced in Europe.

J.P. Morgan, whose first wife died of TB three months after their wedding, donated $85,000 to build the sanitarium. By 1901, the 192-acre sanitarium village included 20 buildings in a blend of commune and medical center. Treatment overseen by the sanitarium’s founder, Alfred Lebbeus Loomis, himself both physician and patient, combined components of traditional Western medicine (allopathy) with those of homeopathy and eclecticism (botanical medicine). This integrative approach resulted in groundbreaking diagnosis and treatment protocols still practiced today. It was here that X-rays and laboratory tests were first used in TB diagnosis, and the link between victims and consumption of unpasteurized milk from TB-infected cows was recognized.

But the most striking advance in medical thought pioneered at Loomis was the concept of “autoinoculation,” later to become the field of immunotherapy, the idea that the best defense against disease is a strong offense mounted by the body’s own immune system. Based on Loomis’ personal experience living in the Adirondack wilds, auto inoculation was thought to be a byproduct of fresh air, clean water, regular exercise and healthy food. To that end, Loomis patients were required to grow much of their own food, do mental and physical work as illness permitted, sleep outdoors, either on porches or in lean-tos or tents, and stimulate their immune systems with herbs, especially echinacea.

There was even a theory that TB could not exist above a certain altitude and that pine forests growing above that altitude played a vital role in providing immunity from the disease, since confirmed by 21st-century Japanese research. In Japan, where “forest bathing” is a national pastime, scientists have demonstrated that pine forests confer on plants and animals within them a herd immunity like that of medically-inoculated human populations    (qz.com/804022/health-benefits-japanese-forest-bathing/).

Sanitariums became obsolete when antibiotics proved effective in curing TB. After Loomis’ closure, the reception building found use as a 55-bed general hospital serving the Liberty area. When it, too, closed, the building operated until 1998 as an Anglican seminary, since purchased and preserved by Alan Gerry, who resided on the grounds while beginning his storied career in electronics.

Loomis’ dual legacy of healthy outdoor life and epicenter of contagion simultaneously attracted city dwellers and devalued real estate, setting the stage for hotelier fortunes.