The battle over how to sweep the bridge between Bangor and Brewer a century ago may not have been a milestone in the treatment of tuberculosis, but it helps us understand the terror and confusion that once surrounded the dread disease. While a host of terrible diseases has replaced TB and other infectious illnesses in our society, modern science is in a better position to fight them today than it was then.

The span, located where the Penobscot Bridge is today, had been a covered toll bridge. By 1906, the roof was gone in the middle because of an ice jam that had battered the structure four years earlier. And even though people still called it “the toll bridge,” no tolls had been collected since two years before when the cities had purchased it from the bridge company.

After two of the men who swept the bridge’s floor died of tuberculosis, the Bangor Daily News launched an editorial campaign in the spring of 1906 to change the way the sweeping was done. The newspaper declared the sweepers had been perfectly healthy before they started working on the bridge. They had contracted TB from inhaling dust that rose in clouds as they swept. It was composed of “vegetable and animal matter … known to be a very favorable breeding place for tubercular bacteria … mingled with the sputa [spit] from consumptive patients.” The newspaper said it based this conclusion on the statements of unnamed Bangor doctors.

To fully appreciate the horror of this announcement, one has to understand that more Maine people died of TB, also known as “the white plague,” than of all other infectious diseases combined, including diphtheria, typhoid and smallpox. In 1906, 1,176 Mainers died. Many thousands more walked the streets in various stages of invalidism, spreading the disease to family, acquaintances and sometimes bystanders. Delicate, pale individuals who tired easily or suffered slight persistent fevers were suspected of harboring the illness. Mothers fled with their children when they encountered a persistent cougher in a public place.

A sense of hopelessness prevailed. “The majority of people believe that tuberculosis is hereditary, and more than that, they believe it is incurable. This leads to neglect during the early months, and takes from many their only sense of recovery,” wrote Dr. E.H. Bennett of Lubec in 1905 in the journal of the Maine Medical Association. In fact, the death rate from TB had declined dramatically between 1892 and 1909 thanks to public education about how it was spread and efforts to treat it, no matter how marginally effective they were. Tuberculosis remained, however, the No. 1 cause of death across all age groups.

Treatment consisted mainly of rest, fresh air and nutritious food. Most people died, however, if the disease had passed the initial stages. Sanatoriums, including a state institution in Hebron, catered to these early cases, but there were far too few beds even for them. People with advanced cases were sent home to die, often spreading the disease to others. The state encouraged local health boards to make sure their rooms were thoroughly disinfected after they died.

The state also encouraged the availability of burnable “spit cups,” but frequently consumptives avoided using them in public because of the social stigma. Debates raged on such issues as whether TB patients should be allowed to spit in the street as opposed to on the sidewalk. “There is no objection to the man spitting around out doors all he pleases,” advised the state’s secretary of health in a report around this time. “The great danger from tuberculosis patients is of spitting around indoors.”

One out of every 10 people ailing and unable to work in New England was afflicted with consumption, reported the BDN. Many consumptives walked between Bangor and Brewer on the toll bridge where, of necessity, they sometimes had to relieve themselves of the noxious material emitted from their diseased lungs. The sweepers on the Bangor-Brewer bridge should be doing the job late at night when nobody was around, protested the newspaper. Even if the dust were not “seeded with the germs of death,” no one would want to inhale it, said the editorial writer on April 27.

In an editorial on July 25, the newspaper revealed it had won a partial victory. The city had started sprinkling the dust with water on most of the bridge before sweeping it, but the job was still being done during the day when the span was congested with people. Perhaps 10 or 20 percent of the dust continued to rise with the breeze “disseminating death.”

The editorial writer indicated that the doctors who had warned the newspaper about the problem had included “Dr. Woodcock and his associates.” Dr. Galen M. Woodcock had been active in fighting two recent smallpox epidemics as chairman of the Bangor Board of Health. He was now a member of the State Board of Health.

By Aug. 22, the editorial writer, sounding a bit weary, apparently had decided to accept this partial victory. It was a step in the right direction. There were so many other battles to fight. The writer pointed out nevertheless, “The known presence of a deadly disease in the dust of the bridge can hardly induce newcomers to make Bangor or Brewer attractive health resorts.”

Although TB remains a major international problem in Third World nations, effective medicines to treat it were developed in the 1940s, reducing the illness almost to a footnote in Maine. Last year there were only 17 cases in the state. At particular risk are AIDS patients and other people with impaired immune systems. For most people, TB is only a bad memory, if they have any memory of it at all.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.