Tuberculosis and Healthwin: the county's sanatorium regime

The shacks — 1919 — the sanatorium's long course

Five shacks, then a hospital: Before the county had a tuberculosis hospital, it had shacks. The South Bend News-Times' history column on Darden Road (21 March 2026) records that tuberculosis isolation in South Bend first meant one of five quarantine shacks at what is now Potawatomi Park; the sanatorium was then removed to a remoter site north of the city along the river, on Darden Road — Healthwin, which the column calls the first institution of its kind in Indiana, and whose buildings still stand there, still operating under the name. The sanatorium's documented course runs through one physician. In 1919 Dr. St. Clair Darden, aged twenty-eight, was hired as Healthwin's newest lead physician; he became its superintendent and a nationally recognized tuberculosis doctor, and when Indiana built further sanatoria — at least five more by 1930 — Darden, the column records, helped design and advise every one.

The column's figures for the regime's effect are printed as it gives them: in 1913, Healthwin's patients had a 50 percent chance of surviving the quarantine; ten years after Darden arrived, they were beating the disease at a 74 percent clip — in an era when, until streptomycin in 1943, there was no cure. The regime's frictions are in the record too: on 6 March 1919 the News-Times reported the county commissioners investigating charges against Healthwin's management; the disposition of those charges is not in the record reached. The prevention arm reached the county's children: on 15 June 1922 the News-Times reported the tuberculosis league's preventorium camp at Healthwin, thirty children with impaired lungs at the league's expense. The plant grew with the disease's long tenure: the American Hospital Association's bulletin of August 1930 records the county commissioners, the county council, and Healthwin's board approving a $125,000 addition of fifty beds, raising the county tuberculosis hospital's property value past $500,000, with Dr. St. Clair Darden as superintendent; and the federal government's 1957 index, Tuberculosis Beds in Hospitals and Sanatoria, still lists Healthwin Hospital, South Bend, among the state's tuberculosis institutions — the bed figure the index assigns it could not be read reliably from the volume's text and is not printed.

Darden himself died at forty; a cabin at the old quarantine site was torched in 1932; the county home sent its tubercular residents to Healthwin across the decades, as the Mental Health record notes in its own line. The sanatorium's founding year is given as 1908 in a modern directory listing; the first-hand record reached does not confirm a founding date, and none is printed.

Sources:

1. Aaron Helman, "Why Do They Call It Darden Road?", South Bend News-Times, 21 March 2026 — the five quarantine shacks at the present Potawatomi Park, the removal to Darden Road, Healthwin as the first institution of its kind in Indiana, Darden's hiring in 1919 at twenty-eight and his superintendency, the 1913 survival figure of 50 percent and the 74 percent figure ten years after his arrival, the five further Indiana sanatoria he advised by 1930, his death at forty, the 1932 cabin fire, and the buildings' survival under the Healthwin name.
2. Bulletin of the American Hospital Association, August 1930 (archive.org) — the $125,000, fifty-bed addition approved by the county commissioners, the county council, and Healthwin's board, the property value past $500,000, and Darden as superintendent.
3. South Bend News-Times, 15 June 1922 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the tuberculosis league's preventorium camp at Healthwin, thirty children, at the league's expense; and 6 March 1919 — the county commissioners' investigation of charges against Healthwin's management, the disposition not in the record reached.
4. U.S. Public Health Service, Tuberculosis Beds in Hospitals and Sanatoria (1957; archive.org) — Healthwin Hospital, South Bend, listed in the federal index of tuberculosis institutions; its bed figure not reliably legible in the volume's text layer and not printed.
5. Mental Health record of this history — the county home's sending of residents to Healthwin, cross-referenced at pointer size; the institution itself is assigned to this record by that record's own line.