![]() Doctors at the asylum also believed that using the tunnels would help to lower the disease’s spreading rate. 500 feet of corridors line the asylum, once only meant for worker travel, ended up being used to transport corpses of the dead from inside the asylum, since the sight of the dead being carried away lowered patient morale. Tunnels were built on the first floor of the sanatorium and were used as an entrance and exit for the staff of the asylum. Some ‘treatments’ were brutal, and in some cases patients had their lungs surgically resected, or partially removed and collapsed in order to let the organ ‘rest.’īecause of the highly contagious nature of the disease, Waverly Hills Sanatorium enacted extreme quarantine measures and the asylum functioned as an island, producing its own food, raising its own animals, and even ran a functioning post office. Prior to the development of a vaccine, treatments for tuberculosis ranged from harmless to completely barbaric. Since antibiotics did not exist alongside the sanatorium’s tenure, other forms of aid were used to treat patients such as heat lamps, fresh air, and positive reassurance. Not entirely bad news, considering that the belief was that fresh air was the best treatment for tuberculosis at the time. In the summer of 1912, all tuberculosis patients from the city hospital were relocated to temporary quarters in tents on the grounds of Waverly Hills as they awaited the finish of the sanatorium. Source: FlickrĪs the need for more space grew, the city of Louisville began to prepare to build a new Louisville City Hospital, and the hospital commissioners decided in their plans that there would be no provision in the new city hospital for the admission of tuberculosis patients, which prompted the Board of Tuberculosis to erect a hospital specially for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. To try and contain the disease, a two-story wooden sanatorium was opened which featured open air pavilions, each housing 20 patients for the treatment of ‘early cases.’ Waverly Hills Sanatorium at nighttime, when it’s spectral patients come to greet visitors. the moist, humid environment was a perfect breeding ground for the tuberculosis bacteria. Many of these cases in Louisville at the time were centralized along the wetlands of the Ohio River. In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was stricken with an outbreak of tuberculosis. The second ‘e’ was dropped at some point in history, but it’s not exactly clear when. The Board of Tuberculosis kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. Due to her fondness for Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, she called the schoolhouse ‘Waverley School.’ Major Hays liked the name, he said it had a peaceful sound and decided to also name his property Waverley Hill. He started a one-room schoolhouse on Pages Lane and hired a woman named Lizzie Harris as the teacher. Since the new home was far from any schools, Major Hays opened his very own local school for his daughters to attend. Hays in 1883 and was the Hay’s family home. The land that the asylum was built on, known as ‘Waverly Hill,’ was purchased by Major Thomas H. Originally, the plan was to turn it into a hotel, but obviously that is no longer the case. Like many other sanatoriums of its time and purpose, Waverly Hills closed its doors due to the use of the antibiotic drug streptomycin, which lowered the need for such a hospital. Opening its doors in the early 1900s, the sanatorium was created to house the growing number of ‘White Plague’ patients, or those suffering from tuberculosis. Well known in the ghost hunting community, the former sanatorium is located in Louisville, Kentucky. Then in 1882, a German physician called Robert Koch announced to an expectant world the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes Tuberculosis.īut faith in nature’s agents-fresh air and sunlight-persisted.The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is one whose name rings more than a few bells. People believed that fresh air and sunlight would help alleviate the symptoms of Tuberculosis. Then as now, it was characterized by drenching night sweats, persistent coughing (that would many times produce blood), lack of appetite, lethargy, and swollen extremities. In the 19th century, Pulmonary Tuberculosis, then known as “consumption,” killed as many as one in seven people in the US. Regardless, such stories strike a mysterious chord in our souls that’s hard to dismiss. Not all people believe ghost stories such as the ones that have plagued Waverly Hills. It’s usually in a hospital that the “angel of death” is most active. ![]() With its hospital setting-where death lurks in every shadow-Waverly Hills’ association with ghost stories would not be improbable.
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