In the year 1842, a terrible disease was killing thousands upon thousands of people across the twenty-six states and the western territories. In those days it was called consumption. Today we know it as tuberculosis, or TB.
It struck the young, the middle-aged, and the old. The first signs of illness were fever and sweats, mostly in the evening and at night. The sufferers felt weak. Then their chests began to hurt. This was because the disease was attacking their lungs.
As the sickness progressed, patients began to cough all the time. When they started to cough up blood, their relatives knew it was time to choose a gravestone—the patients were going to die.
Doctors didn’t know how to treat consumption. They tried many experiments in hopes of finding a cure. But in the year 1842, consumption was still killing more people in the United States than any other disease was.
In his clinic in Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Croghan had many patients suffering from consumption. He tried to help them, but nothing worked. Then one day he had an idea.
Doctors had noticed that most people who suffered from consumption lived in cities. Not so many people caught the disease out in the countryside. And sometimes patients who left their city homes and went to a hospital away from crowds and noise got better.
Maybe bringing his patients to Mammoth Cave would help them improve, Dr. Croghan thought. He believed that the air inside the cave was clean and pure. The temperature was always the same, and maybe that would help the patients, too. He would set up a hospital inside the cave!
John Croghan asked his Louisville patients whether they would like to join his experiment. A few of the patients had visited the cave, and the others had heard about it. All of them were frightened about having consumption, because they knew they were likely to die.
So several of them agreed to give the idea a try. But the sick people would need a place to stay. Dr. Croghan ordered his slaves to build several cottages deep inside the cave.
Just beyond Steamboat Rock, the cottages went up. The first two were constructed out of stones collected from inside the cave. They had tiny square windows and roofs made of canvas. Slaves brought in beds, storage chests, benches, and other items to make the patients comfortable.
Stephen watched the cottages being built as he led tours past the Grand Curve and on down the tunnel toward the Cataracts. He didn’t know what to think. He had heard that the patients would live in the cave day and night until they got better.
Stephen didn’t think he would like to spend every minute inside Mammoth, even if he did have a bad disease. He was always happy to come out into the sunlight or into a moonlit evening. In the cave there were no trees, no grass, no flowers. No sun shone, no birds sang. He wondered how the consumption patients would adjust to such a strange life.
The first patient to arrive was a doctor himself. In the summer of 1842, Dr. William Mitchell came to Mammoth Cave from Glasgow, Kentucky. He spent five weeks in one of the stone cottages and then left, pronouncing himself “very much relieved.”
The experiment seemed to be a success! Other doctors heard the news and asked if they could send patients to the cave. Men and women arrived from New York, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and South Carolina. New wooden huts had to be built to house them all.
Now when Stephen took a tour past the hospital, he would see a very strange sight. Patients wandered among the huts. They were afraid to go far for fear of getting lost. A few feeble lanterns shed some light in each cottage, but it was very dark everywhere else. Potted plants lined the pathway. They soon withered from lack of sunlight.
At mealtime, a couple of slaves brought provisions from the inn. One of them was Stephen’s friend Alfred. Part of Alfred’s job was to climb onto a rock and blow a horn to announce that the food had arrived.
Stephen was there one day to see what happened next.
Patients dressed in long white robes drifted out of the huts like ghosts floating across the rocky floor. Several coughed into handkerchiefs. They had all grown thin and pale during their time in the cave.
Stephen knew the patients had almost nothing to do all day. Many did not feel well and spent hours in bed. Others tried to talk to the visitors who passed through, but no one wanted to get very close to them. They were afraid they would catch consumption, too.
Several times Stephen guided friends or relations down to see the patients. The visitors stopped at the cottages while he led other paying customers farther along the trail. On the way back he would collect them and take them back to the mouth of the cave.
One night Stephen was sound asleep when a knock came at the door of his cabin. Stephen pulled on his pants and went to the door. Another slave was standing there. “Master wants you,” he said.
Doctor Croghan was waiting nearby. In the light from his lantern he looked very tired, as if he had not slept. “Come, Stephen. You need to lead a party into the cave.”
In the middle of the night? It would make no difference inside the cave, since it was always dark there. But this request was very odd.
Stephen got his shirt and jacket and followed the doctor into the chilly winter air. “What has happened, sir?”
Dr. Croghan’s shoulders were slumped.
“One of my consumption patients has died. I want to remove him from the cave as quickly as possible for burial.”
Stephen shivered, and not just because of the cold. The slaves loved to tell ghost stories. Stephen had never seen anything that looked like a ghost, even in the darkest corners of the cave. But he hoped the sick man had died quietly and that his soul had found its way back outside.
A small group of slaves was waiting with a makeshift stretcher. Croghan’s medical assistant was there, too, looking tired and nervous. In the rustling darkness, the party proceeded toward the cave.
Patients dressed in long white robes drifted out of the huts like ghosts floating across the rocky floor.
The nighttime journey went smoothly. But it would not be the last time Stephen helped with such a task.
Dr. Croghan’s experiment turned out to be a failure. Most of his patients were already very sick when they arrived, and not a single one got better.
In all, five men and women died in the cave. One by one their bodies were laid out on a wide slab next to one of the stone cottages. The place became known as Corpse Rock.
The rest of the patients all decided to leave. The experiment lasted only a few months. Then the tunnels were empty again. By the spring of 1843, only the two stone cottages and Corpse Rock remained.