Sanatorium

One of the key locations in "Illness as Metaphor" is the sanatorium – the specialized hospital where tuberculosis patients were treated, mainly in the nineteenth century. Sanatoriums demonstrate both the real medical treatment of tuberculosis and the peak of the metaphors surrounding the illness. In “The Magic Mountain,” the sanatorium is depicted as an alternate world removed from the political and historical events occurring outside. The patients within the sanatorium spiritually and mentally developed through conversations with each other. The sanatorium also fit into the Romantics’ perspective that isolation from the chaos of the urban lifestyle was beneficial and healthy. Sontag also uses the sanatorium to highlight the similarities between the romanticizing metaphors surrounding tuberculosis and those surrounding mental illness. In the nineteenth century, patients diagnosed with mental illness were also treated in a ‘sanatorium,’ which was a euphemism for an asylum (35). Sontag summarizes her description of the...