Loomis: The Man, The Sanitarium, and The Search for the Cure

Loomis tells the story of the fight against tuberculosis, believed responsible for a billion deaths worldwide between 1700 and 1900. Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, who was diagnosed with the disease himself in 1867, was an innovative thinker and pioneer of the climatological treatment of the disease in a sanitarium setting. He helped one of his patients, Dr. E. L. Trudeau, to open the first American sanitarium in the Adirondacks in 1883, and realizing the need for a larger facility nearer New York City, purchased land and raised the money to operate such a facility near Liberty in Sullivan County. Opened in 1896, it continued to treat patients through 1942.