“Connolly draws on her sophisticated understanding of the health care system to ask important questions. She makes a unique contribution to the history of medicine, nursing, tuberculosis, child health, and social welfare."
-Emily Abel, author of Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion: A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles

"Superbly researched and elegantly written, Saving Sickly Children is a a wonderful contribution to the history of tuberculosis and American society."
-Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., author of When Germs Travel and Quarantine!
 

Known as "The Great Killer" and "The White Plague," few diseases influenced American life as much as tuberculosis. Sufferers migrated to mountain or desert climates believed to ameliorate symptoms. Architects designed homes with sleeping porches and verandas so sufferers could spend time in the open air. The disease even developed its own consumer culture complete with invalid beds, spittoons, sputum collection devices, and disinfectants. The "preventorium," an institution designed to protect children from the ravages of the disease, emerged in this era of Progressive ideals in public health.

In this book, Cynthia A. Connolly provides a provocative analysis of public health and family welfare through the lens of the tuberculosis preventorium. This unique facility was intended to prevent TB in indigent children from families labeled irresponsible or at risk for developing the disease. Yet, it also held deeply rooted assumptions about class, race, and ethnicity. Connolly goes further to explain how the child-saving themes embedded in the preventorium movement continue to shape children's health care delivery and family policy in the United States.

Cynthia A. Connolly is an assistant professor at Yale University School of Nursing and an assistant professor in the history of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine.