Series 2820: Tuberculosis Sanatorium Patient Records. 1941-1970.
Health Institutions (RG 56). Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

Series 2820: Tuberculosis Sanatorium Patient Records. 1941-1970.
Health Institutions (RG 56). Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

      Files of patients admitted to the Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium from 1941 to 1943. Each file folder typically contains correspondence, physician’s orders, nurse’s records, patient charts, application for admission to the sanatorium, applications for leave of absence, transfer cards, various test results, and (for patients who died) a death certificate and notification of burial. The file folders themselves contain a great deal of information about the patients: age, race, religion, occupation, residence, diagnosis, complications, and other facts.
      The patient files in this series fall into two groups: those patients known to be deceased as of the 1940s (death certificates are included in their files or their deaths are otherwise noted), and patients who may still be alive or only recently deceased and therefore are still protected by medical privacy laws. The latter group of records will be opened without restriction at some future date; the former group of records is open to the public. Within these two groups, files are arranged alphabetically by last name of patient.

      It is an anomaly that the Department of Archives and History came into possession of these patient records at all, as most of the patient files of the Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium were probably transferred to the Department of Health upon the closure of that institution and then destroyed after the legally proscribed period of time. That such a small set of patient records – patients admitted circa 1943, last names beginning with the letters “A” through “M” only – were transferred lends credence to the theory that this transfer to the Archives was entirely accidental. Nevertheless, these records will be maintained and preserved because they offer a valuable example of what Sanatorium patient files looked like and the medical treatment its patients received during this time period.

Open records

Restricted records