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Dear Dr. Nichols: Letters About Treatment

Letter concerning woman with TB, Mechanic Falls, 1908

Letter concerning woman with TB, Mechanic Falls, 1908

Item 23537 info
Maine State Archives

Nichols may not have responded personally to each letter, but since multiple letters from the same person were addressed to him, it seems likely that he took on the onerous task of writing to each of the hundreds of people who wrote to him.

Here, the caretaker of a woman in Mechanic Falls asks on August 6, 1909 if the woman, a former patient, could be readmitted to Hebron. It is the first of at least three letters she writes to Nichols.

She writes about the financial difficulties of paying for sanatorium care and the challenges of finding alternative care.

"No one wants to take her here as they are afraid they might have her sick on their hands," she writes.