The Rabbit Island Experiment

A Simple Plan:

E.L. Trudeau, the Rabbit Island Experiment, and Tuberculosis Treatment

By Karen M. Aguirre


Department of Biology Coastal Carolina University, SC

Part I – The Rabbit Island Experiment

Imagine that it is 1874 and you have just been diagnosed with consumption, which we now call tuberculosis. That’s what happened to Edward Livingston Trudeau. A few years earlier, he had nursed a brother who ultimately died of the disease. Now, he had a fresh doctor’s degree, a young wife, a new baby, and a terrible problem—a diagnosis that, in his time and place, was often a death sentence.

Dr. Trudeau knew all too well that a large number of people diagnosed with consumption ultimately died. Crowded together in cities like New York, where he was living with his young family, were tens of thousands of immigrants who were very glad to have their back-breaking factory jobs, but came home each night to inadequate housing, food, ventilation, sanitation, and little or no leisure or relaxation time. Consumptives labored for as long as they could draw breath as the bacterial infection in their lungs worsened and spread, eroding blood vessels and causing bleeding and poor oxygenation, or causing the lungs to fill with fluid until the sufferer might literally drown. Finally, exhausted consumptives would retire to their dank, crowded apartments to be nursed by their families until they died. Often family members would themselves become infected from their close contact and constant inhalation of organisms expelled by their sneezing, coughing, bleeding loved one.

E.L. Trudeau, however, was not poor, nor was he a member of the factory-worker class. He decided to travel to a place where he had spent a lot of time as a boy and a young man, the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. There he could rest a bit, think, take long walks in the open air, and make a plan.

Dr. Trudeau’s condition worsened during the arduous trek north by rail and carriage. In fact, the young man...