Qualla: DeJarnette Sanitarium https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: DeJarnette Sanitarium https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium DeJarnette Sanitarium: Introduction https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium/ Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Joseph DeJarnette envied the Nazis. In a letter to the government of Virginia in the 1930s, the superintendent of the psychiatric hospital that bore his name complained that Germany's program of forced sterilization was outpacing America's own - that the Germans were "beating us at our own game." He had spent three decades arguing that Virginians he diagnosed as defective should not be allowed to reproduce. The Georgian-Revival building he founded in 1932, on a hill outside Staunton, still stands. It is abandoned, fenced off, and one of the most haunted-feeling structures in the Shenandoah Valley. The history it holds is darker than any ghost story.

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/dnzb-dejarnette-sanitarium-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full DeJarnette Sanitarium: A Hospital with a Mission https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium/ Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. DeJarnette had been superintendent of the publicly-funded Western State Hospital since 1906. By the early 1930s, he wanted a parallel institution for middle-income patients - people who could pay modest fees and whose families could afford a building that looked less like an asyl...

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/dnzb-dejarnette-sanitarium-a-hospital-with-a-mission.mp3 0:06 2 full DeJarnette Sanitarium: Buck v. Bell and the Virginia Law https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium/ Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. DeJarnette participated in Buck v. Bell, the 1927 Supreme Court case that upheld the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., writing for the majority, declared that "three generations of imbeciles are enough" - one of the most notorious sentences ev...

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/dnzb-dejarnette-sanitarium-buck-v-bell-and-the-virginia-law.mp3 0:06 3 full DeJarnette Sanitarium: The People Who Lived Here https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium/ Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. It is easy to write about a building. Harder to remember that for sixty-four years, real people lived inside it - patients, often poor, often without anyone to advocate for them, whose presence in the wards was someone else's decision. Among them were children and adolescents; af...

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/dnzb-dejarnette-sanitarium-the-people-who-lived-here.mp3 0:06 4 full DeJarnette Sanitarium: Empty Halls https://qualla.com/dejarnette-sanitarium/ Photo credit Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the 1990s, deinstitutionalization had reshaped American psychiatry. Community-based care replaced the warehouse model, and aging asylums across the country fell empty. In 1996, the DeJarnette Center's operations moved to a modern complex nearby - now the Commonwealth Center fo...

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Image: Ben Schumin | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/b/dejarnette-sanitarium-wp/dnzb-dejarnette-sanitarium-empty-halls.mp3 0:06 5 full