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"Doing Cure in Kiosk, 16 below," White Haven Sanitarium, White Haven, PA, circa 1910.
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A group of patients sit outside in the freezing cold. Snow is on the ground

Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine, Department of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases

After his own bout with consumption, Dr. Lawrence Flick (1856-1938) became a leader in the American effort to eradicate tuberculosis. Flick founded the Pennsylvania Tuberculosis Society in 1892, the first state organization in the nation devoted to the elimination of the disease, and a number of institutions for the care and study of tuberculosis, including the Henry Phipps Institute in Philadelphia and the White Haven Sanitarium. Between 1901 and its closure in 1941, White Haven treated more than 25,335 patients. Convinced that TB was caused by air pollution, Frick chose rural White Haven as the location for a sanitarium. Here he treated patients with fresh air and a high-protein diet of fresh eggs and milk.

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