In August 2002 we made a trip to check out the Lima Tuberculosis Hospital.

After a short drive through town (and due to our excellent directions) we found a small road that leads up to the hospital, but realized it was risky, considering there was a house right in front of the road. We discreetly took the back way and walked a path through the woods.

The hospital is covered in graffiti and all of the windows are gone. It looks completely alone in the woods. We immediately got a very eerie feeling....we thought we saw someone staring down on us from a broken upper floor window.

We entered the hospital on the first floor around the back. It was very old, musty, and dark. The hallway floor was covered in loose black soil. We pictured the hundreds of diseased people that once lived and died there .

HISTORY
The Lima District Tuberculosis hospital, opened April 5, 1911; a 24 bed facility.
It was one of the earliest hospitals in the state to treat tuberculosis. The hospital launched a 50 year battle against the disease. The hospital was enlarged in 1927-28, when the number of Tubercular patients increased, almost $900,000 was appropriated by Allen, Auglaize, Mercer, Van Wert, and Shelby Counties. At this time patients were required three to five years hospitalization treatment. It was remodeled in 1957, providing room for 138 patients, with the latest physical facilities and equipment to care and cure the sick.

By 1961, the hospital was a joint venture of the five counties since the hospital district was formed. Approximately 5000 patients have recieved treatment.[1960] The number of patients entering the hospital is constant, but with modern methods and medicines the time of stay has been cut in half. As late as 1962, people who worked with the public, serving food, were required to obtain a TB test at the Board of Health
each year.
Between January, 1914 and May 1917, surveying 140 people, 18 died of tuberculosis. It ranked with pneumonia as the leading cause of death among this group.
The hospital's name was changed in January 1960, to the Ottawa Valley Hospital. With the decline of tubercular patients, non-tubercular patients were admitted. Modern chemotherapy rapidly reduced the number
of tuberculosis patients and the need for long term care. In 1970, the Ohio Department of Health designated two regional TB hospitals as eligible for State subsidy. Lima Tuberculosis Hospital was forced to close with the loss of these funds.