Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Bangor State Hospital
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|Title= Ray Brook State Hospital
|Image= Bangor1.png
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|Image= Raybrook.jpg
 
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|Body= The Eastern Maine Insane Hospital was opened on July 1, 1901. It was built on a pastoral hill named 'Hepatica Hill' for its flowers overlooking the city of Bangor and the Penobscot River. Pine trees were planted around all of the driveways on the campus and have since grown to enormous sizes.
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|Body= The New York State Hospital for Incipient Pulmonary Tuberculosis (as it was originally named), was commonly known simply as "Ray Brook." Opened in 1904, Ray Brook was the first New York State-operated tuberculosis sanatorium, and the second in the United States, after Massachusetts. After a protracted study of alternative sites, New York State chose to establish its hospital in the highly-regarded fresh air of the Adirondack Mountains, near the critical mass of tuberculosis experts in Saranac Lake.
  
Within five days of opening in 1901, 145 patients were transferred from the Maine Insane Hospital in Augusta to the Bangor location. Patients were generally committed to the hospital by their community peers, such as town selectmen, family, etc.
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Although medical developments made sanatoria obsolete starting in the mid-1950s, the State Hospital at Ray Brook continued to operate until the mid-1960s. The property was then transferred from the Department of Health to the new Drug Addiction Control Commission, combining enforcement and treatment; in 1971 the new facility opened as the Ray Brook Rehabilitation Center, housing 70 to 130 women addicts. However, it was judged a failure, and closed within five years. It was succeeded by a camp program for adult inmates, "Camp Adirondack". Working with the Department of Environmental Conservation, "campmen", as inmates were known, were employed in logging, sawmill, wildlife preservation, construction of campsites and snowmobile and cross-country ski trails, and construction of a toboggan run at the Mount Pisgah ski area. The camp also constructed the Ice Palace each winter for the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival.  [[Ray Brook State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
Patients worked the fields, raised livestock, manned the laundry, sewing room and kitchen as part of their "treatment." This made the hospital self-sufficient and any excesses were sold at market to pay additional costs, until 1973 when the case of Sonder vs. Brennan went to court and it was determined that patients in public institutions could not work without being paid.
 
 
 
The name of the hospital changed in 1913 to Bangor State Hospital and then eventually to Bangor Mental Health Institute in the early 70's. The highest patient census was in 1970 with 1,200 patients; however, with a concerted downsizing effort in the 70's, the census fell to 470 in 1974. There were approximately 300 patients through much of the 80's.  [[Bangor State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 02:21, 2 October 2022

Featured Article Of The Week

Ray Brook State Hospital


Raybrook.jpg

The New York State Hospital for Incipient Pulmonary Tuberculosis (as it was originally named), was commonly known simply as "Ray Brook." Opened in 1904, Ray Brook was the first New York State-operated tuberculosis sanatorium, and the second in the United States, after Massachusetts. After a protracted study of alternative sites, New York State chose to establish its hospital in the highly-regarded fresh air of the Adirondack Mountains, near the critical mass of tuberculosis experts in Saranac Lake.

Although medical developments made sanatoria obsolete starting in the mid-1950s, the State Hospital at Ray Brook continued to operate until the mid-1960s. The property was then transferred from the Department of Health to the new Drug Addiction Control Commission, combining enforcement and treatment; in 1971 the new facility opened as the Ray Brook Rehabilitation Center, housing 70 to 130 women addicts. However, it was judged a failure, and closed within five years. It was succeeded by a camp program for adult inmates, "Camp Adirondack". Working with the Department of Environmental Conservation, "campmen", as inmates were known, were employed in logging, sawmill, wildlife preservation, construction of campsites and snowmobile and cross-country ski trails, and construction of a toboggan run at the Mount Pisgah ski area. The camp also constructed the Ice Palace each winter for the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival. Click here for more...