He would often take the blood from the most hyperactive children and inject it into those who were depressed. Joseph Dejarnette gained a reputation for human experiments. The real horrors of Dejarnette came from the doctor that gave the hospital its name. Joseph DeJarnette, a prominent Virginia psychiatrist and strong supporter of eugenics, particularly the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill. Please do not visit without express permission from the land owner.įounded in 1932 as a private pay unit of the Western State Hospital, the DeJarnette Center for Human Development (formally the DeJarnette State Sanitorium) was named after Dr. He also used extreme x-ray exposure as a method of sterilization, which almost certainly would have left its patients with adverse side effects."Ī poetry log for the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in historic Washerst, Pennsylvania).This place is on private property. These included blood transfusions between patients on opposite ends of the psychiatric spectrum, such as taking blood from a hyperactive patient and injecting it into a depressed one. He used the inmates in his asylum as guinea pigs in various experiments. DeJarnette’s sterilization practices were heinous, they weren’t the worst of his work. Joseph DeJarnette, the sanitarium was a private unit for middle-income patients that operated separately from the government-supported state hospital.įrom Atlas Obscura: "DeJarnette was a respected doctor among the white Virginia elite at the time, but his career would ultimately be defined by his strong support for eugenics, specifically the forced sterilization of the mentally ill and others he deemed 'defective.'" More info is HERE.įrom : "“Though Dr. Just down the road from the Western State Hospital is the DeJarnette Sanitarium. Is there some ugly history – a la DeJarnette’s practices and beliefs – that is being veiled?
I find it interesting, though, that the post doesn’t even mention the sanitarium.
Custer and his troops seized and occupied the plantation and freed those who had been enslaved there by the DeJarnette family).Ĭould the odious “family values” rooted in and passed down from generation to generation in the DeJarnette family have also been ingrained in the Magruder family as well?Īt, a wiki “dedicated to sharing and building community knowledge and history about the people, places, and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” there is an entry ( HERE) for DeJarnette’s uncle Edward Magruder – founder of the Magruder Sanitarium. Joseph, the son of Elliott Hawes DeJarnette and Evelyn Magruder, was born on his family's plantation, Pine Forest, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia (in 1862, Union Brig. The DeJarnette family descended from French Hugenot immigrants who settled in Virginia during the colonial period, and they had been prominent in Virginia planter society for generations. I wonder where DeJarnette's uncle, Edward Magruder – founder of the Magruder Sanitarium shown above – stood on the ideas and practices advocated by his nephew? Did DeJarnette’s philosophy and practices arise from the beliefs and ethics of only his family – or from his extended family as well?