A Revised View of Kimball Sanitarium – Part 1

In years past I have written quite a bit about Kimball Sanitarium, which was located on Foothill Boulevard from 1922 until 1962. It occupied the exact spot where the big Ralphs supermarket is today. For those who don’t know, our valley was founded on the industry of sanitariums, initially for lung diseases such as TB but later for mental illness. There were three large sanitariums for mental illness here: Hillcrest, at the top of Lowell Avenue; Rockhaven on Honolulu Avenue; and Kimball. I have attempted to write the history of all these over the years, based on newspaper accounts and oral histories. I have sometimes gotten the flavor of these histories wrong and that has been the case with Kimball Sanitarium.

I have a bad tendency to accentuate the morbid in my writings, sometimes to the detriment of the actual history. Occasionally that comes back to bite me and very occasionally I get the chance to clean things up. With Kimball Sanitarium, I initially took a dark tone, describing padded rooms, manacles on the wall, horribly insane men and women locked away from the world.

Recently I received an email from David Kimball. He is the son of Merritt Kimball who ran Kimball Sanitarium. Dave grew up at Kimball Sanitarium. Dave wrote: “In your writings, you used the words ‘notorious’ and ‘infamous’ to describe Kimball Sanitarium. At first, I was somewhat taken aback and a little disappointed in the use of those descriptions but upon reflection I suppose such was the state of mental health medicine and treatment solutions in those days.”

Dave’s right. In the years before psychotropic drugs not much was available to treat mental illness. We sometimes look back on those days as barbaric but it really was dedicated people doing a very hard job, with not many tools to work with other than removing the patients from emotionally unhealthy environments.

Dave continued: “As was discovered during the demolition [of the sanitarium], we had a very few, perhaps four or five ‘padded rooms’ where the most aggressive patients occasionally were kept. We used arm and/or leg restraints, never straitjackets. These rooms were ‘padded’ to prevent patients from injuring themselves. They were also soundproof. We administered shock treatments. At age 14 I was asked to assist with one; it affected me greatly. To this day I have very unpleasant memories of that experience and avoid all movies and other materials which even hint at that outdated treatment.”

As a side note, electroshock therapy is not outdated. It is still used today and very effectively. Although the treatment was alarming in appearance, it was effective back then as well.

At the turn of the century through the 1920s, the treatment of mental health was going through huge changes. It was evolving from simply locking mental patients away to actually trying to treat and cure their illness. Kimball Sanitarium was part of that change.

With this in mind, I had several email exchanges with Dave Kimball culminating in a trip up to Fresno, where Dave lives with his wife. Dave gave me a great view on what Kimball Sanitarium was all about. In the next couple of weeks, I hope to give more of an eyewitness account of the sanitarium’s history through what Dave has told me.

Despite my earlier declaration that Kimball Sanitarium was “infamous” and “notorious,” it actually was much like Rockhaven Sanitarium. Patients were treated with respect. It was a quality place. It was considered “high-end.” It was almost entirely private pay and, except for a small number of court-ordered admissions, commitment was voluntary. These were people who wished to get better and Kimball Sanitarium was a quiet, peaceful environment where that could happen.

Although we have Dave’s description of the facility and how it ran, we have no records of who stayed there and what their illnesses consisted of or their treatments. That was confidential. Dave’s dad liked to say, “Privacy is paramount.” All patient records were destroyed when Kimball closed in 1962.

Next week, I’ll take a deeper dive into what Dave Kimball told me about the sanitarium.