Montefiore Home Country Sanitarium

Montefiore Home Country Sanitarium was an American sanatorium located in Bedford Hills, Westchester County, New York.

[1][2][3] The Country Sanitarium came into existence as a result of the repeated observations that the proportion of consumptives among the sufferers treated in the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids was very large.

[1] The first annual report showed that 57 patients had been treated, of whom five were cured, eight were left in an improved condition, and 15 were transferred to the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids in Manhattan, as their advanced condition of phthisis became detrimental to the surrounding incipient cases; and 29 cases remained in the sanatorium at the time the report was finished.

It was exclusively for the consumptive poor, who were selected from the applicants for admission to the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids.

[4] The enlarged building consisted of four pavilions and an administration block, united to the north by a corridor 99 meters (325 ft) long, somewhat after the style of the Massachusetts State Sanitarium.

The floors were of polished hardwood, with rounded angles, except in the closets, store rooms, and kitchen, where they were of mosaic tile.

The administration block had a basement, containing a laboratory, morgue, cloak rooms, lavatory and bathrooms, and two upper floors.

Efforts were made to confine the number of patients to those in the incipient stages of the disease, although no extreme line was drawn.

Partially cured patients were constantly being sent home from the sanitarium, and this explains the fact that the institution was not filled to its very limit.