This past winter has reminded me that the Forest has as much to offer now as it does in full leaf. Without the green, you can see through the trees, read the contours, and pick out details that remain hidden for most of the year.
Along the Ramée, between Brassine and the Solvay estate, the old sanatorium comes into view. Not for long. You catch it through the trunks and then it is gone again.
It is no longer in use. There are plans to demolish it and allow the Forest to reclaim the site.
At the start of the 20th century, Belgium stood at the forefront of the fight against tuberculosis, a disease responsible for around 10–15% of all deaths nationally, or some 12,000 to 18,000 lives each year. Rapid industrialisation had brought overcrowding, and with it, illness.
The sanatorium you see here was founded in the early years of that century and expanded with additional pavilions, notably in the 1930s. It was directed by Dr Gustave Derscheid, a specialist in pulmonary disease, who had earlier established Belgium’s first free tuberculosis dispensary in 1897.
This formed part of a wider European response. Patients were treated with air, light, and rest. Hence the forest.
It was medicine by landscape.
With the arrival of antibiotics in the 1950s, its original purpose fell away, and the site passed into other medical uses. You may still catch a sign along the Ring, a vestige of access once taken from the Chaussée de Mont-Saint-Jean, long since absorbed into the modern road.
A decision has now been taken to remove the buildings, and the entire site, some ten hectares, is to be returned to the forest.
That is not common. Most such places are repurposed. This one is being erased.
During the Second World War, its long-standing director, Dr Gustave Derscheid, resisted German interference in the running of the clinic and was briefly imprisoned. Resistance without arms, but resistance nonetheless.