TB Sanitorium [sic] and Preventorium

Read The Essay | Go to NLM Digital Collections | Watch on YouTube | Go to the 1988 Narrated Version | Read Transcript

DATE: 1926

LENGTH: 48 min

CATEGORY: Research & Documentation, Silent, Black & White

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Harry A. Wilmer and Lois Parker

Summary

In this blurry film with a homemade feel, the camera focuses on seemingly healthy children at a tuberculosis sanatorium near Mont Alto, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. They practice synchronized sunbathing, flipping from stomachs to backs as one. They line up for fresh milk, throw snowballs, and box one another vigorously (girls, too). Such therapies were thought to prevent these children—who were mostly poor and often from immigrant families living in crowded, unhygienic conditions—from contracting tuberculosis. While the sanatorium treated adults who were already ill, the “preventorium” role of the place was more important to the filmmakers, as were the ever-present TB nurses, many drawn from the recovered adult population and trained only to work at sanatoria…Read The Essay

Supplementary Materials

Reminiscences of TB Sanitorium and Preventorium

The Library’s holdings also include a narrated version of the film created in 1988. A former resident, Walter Zeigler, watched the footage and described his time at South Mountain as he remembered it. Sarah Richards, The National Library of Medicine film curator at the time, asked questions along the way.

View the 1988 narrated version

Stills from TB Sanitorium [sic] and Preventorium

Children hold mirrors up to their mouths, reflecting sunlight into their throats.

Doctors and nurses inspect the children in a dormitory

TB nurses in white uniforms with nursing caps smile for the camera

From the NLM Prints & Photographs Collection

Christmas Seal stamp featuring Santa Claus — Christmas Seal, 1924
*National Library of Medicine #101449533*

A poster with a drawing of a man in a medieval costume pulling a rope and ringing a bell — Christmas Seal, 1929
*National Library of Medicine #101452775*

Blue cardstock cover of April 1940 issue of Spunk. — Title page, April 1940 issue, *Spunk* 30, no. 1,
*National Library of Medicine #9812232*

The front cover of the first volume of Spunk. — First title page of Spunk reproduced in April 1940, *Spunk*, 32. no. 1 [ca. April 1940]
*National Library of Medicine #9812232*

Poster of a woman holding a toddler-age child tight in her arms and pressing her cheek to his. — “Protect the Youngsters,” *Spunk* 32, no. 10 (1941): 21 [ca. January 1941],
*National Library of Medicine #9812232*

A photograph of a four-story Dutch Colonial style with multiple dormers . — “Nurses Home,” *Spunk* 30, no. 7 [ca. October 1938],
*National Library of Medicine #9812232*

Digitized Films on Tuberculosis at the National Library of Medicine

Explore films on tuberculosis in the NLM Digital Collections

Tuberculosis Films on Circulating Now

Medicine, Mortality, Faith and Film — Read *Medicine, Morality, Faith and Film* and view the related films on *Circulating Now.*

TB: A Killer Then, A Killer Now — Read *TB: A Killer Now, A Killer Then* and view the related film on *Circulating Now.*

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Psychiatric Interview Films in the Age of Reform: Notes on the Depressive Neurosis Series filmed by the University of Mississippi Medical Center (1969)

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