Marianne's daughter, Charlotte (above), recalls her grandfather bringing Tuberculomucin culture with him to London. 'My mother went on making it in our kitchen in West Hampstead, boiling good lean mince for hours to make the broth. We then ate this totally tasteless meat afterwards.' With her stock of Tuberculomucin, Marianne began to treat desperately ill patients in Prior Place Sanatorium. This was done quite illicitly, without the knowledge or permission of the medical staff. Full treatment would have taken about six months starting off with weekly intradermal injections which left skin reactions of varying intensities. Did anybody notice these? I have looked at what's left of the archive of the London Chest Hospital and certainly nothing is flagged up and Marianne's nursing records contain no evidence that she was 'caught out'. Indeed, she is praised in the Matron's Register as 'a highly intelligent nurse'. Charlotte remembers her mother talking of a physicist, Dr Smith, who was hopelessly sick, having had all the 'orthodox' treatments, but who recovered after she gave him a course of Tuberculomucin.
Charlotte has written an article about her grandfather in the Association of Jewish Refugees journal (July 2011, page 5), telling the Tuberculomucin story and hinting at why it's important to produce it once again. Charlotte herself was a medical student at the Royal Free Hospital, London, in 1946 when she caught tuberculosis and was successfully treated by her mother with Tuberculomucin. She became a GP and now lives in Monmouth on the Welsh borders.
