Lungers: That’s what people suffering from tuberculosis were called because the deadly disease attacked the airways. Historians estimate that around the turn of the 20th century, approximately one in three Denverites had come to the city as lungers seeking a cure for their TB in the city’s dry air and abundant sunshine.
Communities within the city came together to offer health care to the sick. In 1914 Dutch immigrants opened the Bethesda Sanatorium to treat tuberculosis patients on 10 acres in rural southeast
Denver. They named it “Bethesda” after the Hebrew word meaning place of mercy.
Over the next several decades, Bethesda served thousands of patients and their families suffering from TB. But as effective treatments brough the tuberculosis epidemic under control, by the 1940s the
sanatorium was treating fewer and fewer patients. In 1950, Bethesda shifted to an inpatient psychiatric hospital also offering outpatient counseling. To fund the conversion to a psychiatric hospital, the eastern portion of the property was soldto the University of Denver’s Professor’s Housing Coop, known today as South Dahlia Lane. In 1972 a residential care facility opened for elderly patients which continues to serve people today as Clermont Park Senior Living Community.
Despite these transitions, by 1993 Bethesda was no longer financially viable as a hospital and closed its doors. Denver Academy relocated to the former Bethesda campus in 2000. The historic chapel
and gateway were designated as Denver landmarks in 2000.
Explore More
Read more about tuberculosis in Colorado in The Colorado Encyclopedia.
Read more about Bethesda in Bridges Across the Years: A Ninety-Nine Year History of the Bethesda Hospital Association of Denver, Colorado by Meindert Bosch, (Denver: BethesdaPsychHealth System, 1988).
Read more about Bethesda in Bridges Across the Years: A Ninety-Nine Year History of the Bethesda Hospital Association of Denver, Colorado by Meindert Bosch, (Denver: BethesdaPsychHealth System, 1988).
AuthorBio
Kendra Black has been a Denver City CouncilMember and the director of National History Day in Colorado. Today she is president of the Museum of Denver Board of Directors.