I wanted to quickly mention "Waverly Hills Sanatorium: A History" by Lynn Pohl.
I really don't know a ton about the historic building located in Louisville. Heck, I have seen the usual ghost shows, and other brief documentaries on it, but I wanted something with a bit more RESEARCHED and historical information on the place.
Pohl's easy to read volume was exactly what I wanted! You won't find any ghost stories here, this is all facts.
Actual facts, and authentic records are hard to find, and the author acknowledges, many were destroyed (thanks to the 1937 flood and many others were destroyed after the closing of the sanatorium in the early 60s). She was able to piece a lot of the story together from some interesting sources, giving credit to the photo collection of a resident/employee in the 1910s and 1920s. A black newspaper provided a lot of info to her also.
What is seen in Louisville now is the only surviving structure of a once massive campus. There were facilities for men and women, and also for black and white patients (you can guess which facilities were lacking in quality and resources).
The author talks a lot about TB and how it was treated nationally, and how trends affected Waverly Hills and its residents. The rise of factories, and military bases affected things, as groups of people suddenly found themselves closer together.
Again, Pohl doesn't cover the overly told stories about ghosts, but she doesn't really need to. The facts relating to a facility like this can be sad and terrifying enough. She dismisses the often quoted death numbers of 50,000 and higher, but shows that there were still several thousand. Documentation of the "Death Tunnel" and it's use is rare, though employees have reported that it was used to transport dead bodies. One of the most disturbing parts of the book involved some suggestion about how Waverly disposed of General Hospital's garbage AND amputations.
This book gets a big thumbs up from me. Pick this one up when you can!
No comments:
Post a Comment