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The first modern sanatorium for treating tuberculosis was the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary for Scrofula, founded by a Quaker physician in Margate in 1791. Built for 36 patients and later expanded, the building was designed so patients could sleep on open but protected balconies and spend the day in gentle exercise or resting on the beach.
English Dr George Bodington wrote a scathing attack on other TB treatments in 1840, including imprisoning patients in sealed rooms at home. Unknown at the time, this treatment infected their caregivers and family members. Dr Bodington rented a house and opened a sanatorium where patients could enjoy the fresh dry air, exercise and a good diet. The medical establishment responded harshly, with many noted doctors condemning his approach; TB referrals to his sanatorium waned. So he devoted the remainder of his professional life to the care of the mentally ill.
c1930
Photo credit: Beck Archives, University of Denver
The first U.S sanatorium opened in 1885 in Saranac Lake New York by an American doctor who had planned to live in the Adirondack Mountains. Dr Trudeau had read about the Brehmer approach and sought to replicate it. He also read of Dr Robert Koch’s discovery of the TB bacterium and set up his own experiments to test germ theory on animals, to quantify the sanatorium treatment.
See how the architecture of a building could be purpose-designed for a TB sanatorium. External space was allocated for patients at the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society Denver who participated in heliotherapy/sun exposure as a treatment for TB.
A German Dr Hermann Brehmer opened the first sanatorium in the Bavarian Alps in 1854. It was a live-in hospital made of cabins where patients could get fresh air, good food, prescribed rest and exercise. Brehmer had weatherproof wooden benches fixed into the ground at regular intervals along the forest paths. This life offered a degree of remission to some patients, by helping to strengthen their own immune systems. Sanatoria also gave the benefit of separating the infected from others, sometimes for years.
The first U.S sanatorium opened in 1885 in Saranac Lake New York by an American doctor who had planned to live in the Adirondack Mountains. Dr Trudeau had read about the Brehmer approach and sought to replicate it. He also read of Dr Robert Koch’s discovery of the TB bacterium and set up his own experiments to test germ theory on animals, to quantify the sanatorium treatment.
See how the architecture of a building could be purpose-designed for a TB sanatorium. External space was allocated for patients at the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society Denver who participated in heliotherapy/sun exposure as a treatment for TB.
The many sanatoria accommodated a small fraction of the millions of TB victims. Wanting to avoid deaths, sanatoria often did not accept people with advanced disease. And because of the cost of sanatorium care, poor patients were left to die at home with their families. The death rate in sanatoria or at home were the same i.e half of patients died. So the secrecy within these families was intense.
Once antibiotics were discovered in the 1940s, they provided a real cure for TB, so sanatoria declined and closed. But even though the sanatoria had not cured TB, they did provide a long-term benefit to families and society.
In c1930 my paternal grandmother disappeared from her home, leaving her husband and 6 children alone. The oldest two children were mature enough to stay at home, but the four youngest boys were separated and each lived with an aunt or uncle. Apparently my grandmother had TB and was sent to a sanatorium in a country region an hour outside Melbourne, for an unknown number of years.
The boys were told that family secrecy was essential, that they were never to mention TB at their primary school or Sunday School. But they did know that TB was so infectious that they could NEVER visit the sanatorium, open a letter their mother wrote or handle the embroidered or knitted gifts that their mother made and posted to them. My father didn’t even remember how long his mother had been absent.
See an analysis of being locked away, for mental problems and not for TB. Nonetheless the isolation seemed the same. Willard Asylum in New York's Finger Lakes admitted its first patients in 1869. Many of the early residents arrived after years of incarceration and mistreatment in dismal alms houses. Before long, Willard grew into a sizeable village, relying heavily on unpaid patients labouring in the farm, bakery, kitchens and industrial factories. Factory-sized brick buildings housed patients, while the more opulent residences were designated for staff.
By the early C20th, the patient numbers in Willard State Hospital rose steadily, with over-crowded wards and deteriorating conditions. The hospital's original purpose as a healthy rural retreat was lost in the grim realities of institutional life.
Willard's population reached an all-time high of 4,076 in 1955, and conditions within the institutions were harsh. By then state hospitals began to use newly developed anti-psychotic drugs to control patients crammed into tight living quarters. In the early 1970s, new laws promoted patients' rights and resulted in a shift away from long-term institutionalisation.
50,000+ patients had been admitted to Willard during its 126-year history, and nearly half of those died there. When Willard closed in 1995, workers discovered hundreds of suitcases in an abandoned building’s attic. Many of them seemed untouched since their owners packed them decades earlier, before entering the institution.
By the early C20th, the patient numbers in Willard State Hospital rose steadily, with over-crowded wards and deteriorating conditions. The hospital's original purpose as a healthy rural retreat was lost in the grim realities of institutional life.
Willard's population reached an all-time high of 4,076 in 1955, and conditions within the institutions were harsh. By then state hospitals began to use newly developed anti-psychotic drugs to control patients crammed into tight living quarters. In the early 1970s, new laws promoted patients' rights and resulted in a shift away from long-term institutionalisation.
50,000+ patients had been admitted to Willard during its 126-year history, and nearly half of those died there. When Willard closed in 1995, workers discovered hundreds of suitcases in an abandoned building’s attic. Many of them seemed untouched since their owners packed them decades earlier, before entering the institution.
Willard closed in 1995,
Hundreds of suitcases remained from the patients who never returned home.
Hundreds of suitcases remained from the patients who never returned home.
SMH
We learn who these invisible people were, prior to being committed behind Willard’s hospital walls, largely from the clothing and personal objects left behind. The objects speak about families, friends, careers, sports, studying, writing and travelling, but also about loss and isolation. See their lives coming apart due to unemployment, loved ones dying, loneliness, poverty or some other crisis.
The collection raised difficult questions. Why were these people committed into this institution, and why did so many stay for so long? How were they treated? What was it like to spend years in a closed institution, shut away from a society that wanted to distance itself from these people? Why did most of the patients live out their days at Willard? What happened to their families?
The Willard cemetery opened in 1870, a year after the institution opened. Most of the 5,776 graves bore only numbered, cast-iron markers. These were the relics of the thousands of patients who spent much of their adult lives confined in a state asylum.