Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
South Carolina State Sanatorium
Motivated by the national anti-tuberculosis movement, the General Assembly of South Carolina allocated $10,000 to fund a state sanatorium in 1914. The sanatorium opened in 1915 with one “open-air ward of frame construction” and the capacity for sixteen white male patients. A wood-frame Administration Building, a private residence for the superintendent, and a small farm completed the complex. Located in State Park, the property consisted of two hundred acres. By 1919, the legislature appropriated funding for the addition of a women’s pavilion for sixteen patients as well as an infirmary with the capacity for twelve male and twelve female patients. The infirmary was designed for the care of bedridden patients. Also operating as a communal resource the building included a kitchen and dining room with a capacity for 100 people. The fully operational farm also served the entirety of the sanatorium. It produced dozens of crops, raised chickens and pigs, and later featured a 200-ton tile silo. The dairy, originally comprised of one cow, was another area of early expansion for the property. Some strands of tuberculosis were spread through unpasteurized milk, making the modern diary facility an important medical feature for the sanatorium.
The sanatorium remained a racially segregated institution throughout its thirty-eight year history as a state operated facility. The method of segregation, however, often varied The original method of segregation at the South Carolina Sanatorium was isolation by exclusion, as no blacks were admitted from 1915 to 1919. Despite the hospital’s exclusionary policies, the black community continuously requested tuberculosis treatment from the state by submitting patient applications to the South Carolina Sanatorium. When the South Carolina Sanatorium did expand to meet the healthcare needs of African Americans, the method of segregation was constantly negotiated with the hospital’s growth and development of the built environment. Click here for more...
