sanitarium
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sanitarium
1850–55; < Latin sānit ( ās ) health ( see sanity) + -ārium -ary
Explanation
In the past, someone who was recovering from a long-term illness might stay at a sanitarium, a special kind of hospital. Many sanitariums in the U.S. once treated patients with tuberculosis. A sanitarium was also often called a sanatorium. Even more confusingly, both words were sometimes used to mean "health resort," something closer to a spa than a hospital. Before antibiotics were invented, the most effective treatment for tuberculosis and other lung diseases was fresh air and healthy food at a sanitarium. The word is rooted in the Latin sanitas, "health."
Vocabulary lists containing sanitarium
Maus I: My Father Bleeds History
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The Pigman
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Italianate-Mission in style, boxy with projecting cornice and flat roofline, it belonged to the developer, who in 1925 turned his private villa into a sanitarium and orphanage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2022
Among them was a TB sanitarium that became the seed for today’s City of Hope, the renowned cancer treatment and research center.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2022
“My father was a psychiatrist with his own sanitarium in Beacon, N.Y., where I grew up,” he said.
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2022
The sanitarium was a heath and wellness resort, often visited by the rich and famous looking to improve their lifestyle.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 12, 2022
Hayden was discreetly driven from the park in one of the fair’s innovative English ambulances with quiet rubber tires and placed in a sanitarium for a period of enforced rest.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
For the sake of the good opinion society would maintain of itself, it sends the latter nowadays to hospitals, sanitaria, or their equivalents, where protection for itself without punishment for them may be practised.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Berman, Louis, M.D.
And yet they have, within two days of sharp ride, that finest of sanitaria, the Hismá, which extends as far north and south as they please to go.
From The Land of Midian — Volume 1 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted.
From Maintaining Health Formerly Health and Efficiency by Alsaker, R. L.
Now—only just now—the physicians are doing the same, and establishing out-of-door sanitaria for consumption.
From The Letters of Ambrose Bierce With a Memoir by George Sterling by Bierce, Ambrose
Other trained nurses become matrons and housekeepers in private hospitals, sanitaria, and colleges.
From The Canadian Girl at Work A Book of Vocational Guidance by Willison, Marjory MacMurchy, Lady
Remember that sanitariums weren’t modern hospitals where patients dropped in for a checkup or treatment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2022
After graduating in 1953, she worked in sanitariums while completing a master’s degree in fine arts at BU, awarded in 1957.
From Seattle Times ● May 1, 2021
“We were unprepared. We had 70 tuberculosis sanitariums geared for out-of-staters, but very few hospitals to treat local people. We were the only state of the 48 that did not have a public health department.”
From Washington Times ● Mar. 24, 2020
Upon her release, Zelda spent the next five years occasionally living with Scott and Scottie but mostly hospitalized in sanitariums in the United States.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 21, 2019
But such persons almost always go back to the sanitariums.
From How to Eat A Cure for "Nerves" by Hinkle, Thomas C. (Thomas Clark)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
