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A home among the gum trees: the Victorian Sanatorium for consumptives, Echuca and Mount Macedon

Abstract The history of the treatment of tuberculosis in Australia has largely been focused on the development of medical treatments, the architectural features of custom-built sanatoria and the human impact of the disease in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These discussions often mention contemporary debates amongst medical men and the laity regarding the best treatment, but the influence of medical climatology in deciding where medical facilities should be placed is often overlooked. The first sanatorium in the Colony of Victoria had two branches: Echuca and Mount Macedon. These two locations differ in terms of altitude, the surrounding forest and meteorological variation. Yet, both sites were considered suitable at the time for the location of a sanatorium, possibly due to the health-promoting and aesthetic aspects of nearby eucalypt forests. This article explores why they may at first modernly appear to be substantially different locations, but contemporary medical climatology emphasised their similarities.