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R.H. GILES, WELLCOME CENTER
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By Victoria Jaggard
“Modern medicine is uncomfortable dealing with things where we don’t have
a quick fix,” notes pulmonologist Lancelot Pinto. But in the 19th century,
taking your time to get better was all the rage—and that practice could offer
important lessons for people today suffering from long COVID.
In the 1800s no one less than Florence Nightingale advocated for widespread adoption of convalescence, a period of slow recovery after an illness, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar reports. If you were wealthy, that could mean a trip to a spa town where you could eat well, take naps, and gently return to physical exertion. There were also specialized convalescent homes for the working class, many of them funded by charities, and doctors would advise patients to rest and recuperate at home if they couldn’t afford a visit.
Convalescent culture tapered off around World War II with the rise in antibiotics and vaccines, as well as changes to the economics of healthcare. But clinics working with long COVID patients today are revisiting some of the tenets of convalescence, and they are seeing better outcomes for patients.
“It’s a cultural shift of going back to the basics,” says William Brode of UT Austin, “of dealing with rehabilitation that is slow.”
Read our full story here.
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