Opened on February 17, 1929, the Mississippi State Preventorium operated
continuously until 1976. The Mississippi Preventorium, like similar
hospitals throughout the country, was an institution for sickly, anemic,
and underweight children. It was established on the grounds of the
Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanitorium in the early years of the
twentieth century when tuberculosis was a dreaded disease worldwide. The
TB Sanitorium hospital housed those with tuberculosis, offering refuge
for patients of all ages afflicted with the pernicious and contagious
disease. Although located on the same medical campus, the preventorium
was a separate medical institution for children; no children with TB
were admitted in the sixty-year run of the hospital. The name
preventorium meant a place of preventing disease as there was a fear
of sickly children contracting TB. The Mississippi Preventorium was one
of the last, if not the very last, of these special hospitals for
children.
Now closed, the preventorium housed over three thousand children,
including author Susan Annah Currie. In this intimate memoir, Currie
details her fifteen-month stay at the preventorium. From her arrival in
May 1959 at six years old, Currie vividly explores the unique and
isolating world that she and children across the country experienced.
Her exacting routine, dictated by the nurses and doctors who now acted
as her parents, erased the distinction between patients and created both
a sense of community among the children and a deep sense of loneliness.
From walking silently single file through the cold, narrow halls of the
hospital to nurses recording every detail of their bathroom habits to
extremely limited visitation from family, Currie's time at the
preventorium changed her and those around her, leaving an indelible mark
even after their return home.
While many of the records from the preventorium have been lost, Currie's
memoir opens to readers a lost history largely forgotten. Told in
evocative prose, The Preventorium explores Currie's personal trials,
both in the hospital and in the echoes of her experiences into
adulthood.
