Tuberculosis and the sanatorium regime: Healthwin, boundary-printed

1913 – 1957

The county's regime sat outside both cities' centers, and isolation came first: tuberculosis in St. Joseph County was treated, at the start, in five quarantine shacks on the ground of the present Potawatomi Park — isolation before institution. The county's sanatorium, Healthwin, then removed to Darden Road north of South Bend, "the first institution of its kind in Indiana" in the words of Aaron Helman's South Bend News-Times history column of 21 March 2026. Dr. St. Clair Darden, whose name the road already carried into the institution's, was hired in 1919 at twenty-eight and became its superintendent; survival under the regime rose from 50 percent in 1913 to 74 percent ten years after his arrival. The regime had its politics: on 6 March 1919 the county commissioners investigated charges against the sanatorium's management — the disposition of those charges does not stand in the record reached, and the investigation is printed without an ending the record does not give. A preventorium camp for exposed children opened at Healthwin on 15 June 1922 with 30 children. In August 1930 the American Hospital Association's bulletin recorded a $125,000 fifty-bed addition approved and the property's value past $500,000. The United States Public Health Service's Tuberculosis Beds in Hospitals and Sanatoria still lists Healthwin Hospital, South Bend, in 1957 — the regime outlasting, in print, the antibiotics that ended it. A modern directory's founding year of 1908 for the institution is not first-hand confirmed and is not printed as fact.

The state's month, and Mishawaka's share: the December 1914 bulletin counts 306 tuberculosis deaths in Indiana that month, 253 of them pulmonary — the standing background toll of the sanatorium era. Mishawaka's share is stated plainly: no tuberculosis institution, clinic or campaign seated in Mishawaka stands in any record reached, and the medical-advancements file's boundary negative on the point is conformed here. Mishawaka's consumptives were the county regime's patients — in the shacks, at Darden Road, in the preventorium's children's camp — as residents of the county the sanatorium served. The county's institution, the county's toll, the town's share at residence strength: the article prints each at its own.

Sources

1. The South Bend epidemics record — the five quarantine shacks at the present Potawatomi Park; the removal to Darden Road; Dr. St. Clair Darden (hired 1919, aged 28; superintendent); survival 50 percent (1913) to 74 percent; the commissioners' investigation of 6 March 1919, disposition not in the record; the preventorium camp, 15 June 1922, 30 children; the 1930 addition. Boundary-printed.
2. Aaron Helman, South Bend News-Times history column, 21 March 2026 — "the first institution of its kind in Indiana."
3. AHA Bulletin, August 1930 — the $125,000 fifty-bed addition; property value past $500,000.
4. U.S. Public Health Service, Tuberculosis Beds in Hospitals and Sanatoria (1957) — Healthwin Hospital, South Bend, still listed.
5. Indiana State Board of Health, Monthly Bulletin, December 1914, read first-hand — Indiana tuberculosis deaths that month: 306, of them 253 pulmonary.
6. Medical-advancements file of this record — the Mishawaka boundary negative: Healthwin is the county's; no Mishawaka institution.