TB

“If sanitariums were ineffective, and perhaps even unnecessary, why do they figure so prominently in American tuberculosis histories and resonate so strongly in family memories? One of the strongest justifications for sanitariums was that they met the basic psychological need of a community to isolate its sick and diseased. The sanitarium was a modern and humane version of the pesthouse. . . . After 1905 few people wanted to be around a consumptive if it was not absolutely necessary, and a voluntary system of removal accorded with prevailing mores: if sanitariums could be perceived to be both morally and aesthetically attractive, then the infected would want to go there as a civic and familial duty, and the community could feel it had done a service to the sick” (Ott, 150). Decisions to enter sanitariums based on money, family relationships, and chances of recovery (Bates, 258-61).