PHOTOS COURTESY SANGAMON VALLEY COLLECTION
Opened in 1913, the Springfield Open Air Colony, later often known as the Palmer Sanitorium, served tuberculosis sufferers. Within the Nineteen Fifties, the property grew to become the Illinois Presbyterian House.
Dr. George Palmer was well-known for his dedication to medical science slightly than common “indicators and omens and charms” of the day, and for his recent air-and-sunshine strategy to good well being and vitality. The Sangamon County Historic Society revealed excerpts from Palmer’s 1911 speech to the Illinois Farmers Institute’s Division of Family Science, together with these excerpts.
“Open your home windows and lift your shades. … Do not comply with fads together with your youngsters. Do not give slightly one chilly baths except you’re certain they agree with him. Do not imagine all you learn on breakfast meals packages and do not get the concept bran beneath one other identify will take the place of bread and butter and meat and eggs.
“Create in your youngsters a want for good well being slightly than a worry of illness. Impress upon them that correct residing and avoidance of hurtful issues will make them robust and massive and efficient. Do not try and frighten them into good habits by gloomy guarantees of illness, medication, and medical doctors.
“Let your girls and boys be a part of within the chase after the spirit of well-being and they’re going to benefit from the sport. Do not trigger them to cringe in worry earlier than goblins and demons of illness.”
For extra, go to sangamoncountyhistory.org.
– DiAnne Crown
