This vintage postcard features a picture of Dr. Turner’s Sanitarium in Colfax, Iowa. Drs. Alice and Lewis Turner were owners of the Sanitarium “where one is taught to get well by natural methods”. The sanitarium was established by the Turners in 1904. The building was previously a hotel (The Grand). The average patient stay was three weeks and the doctors only used medicine in “stubborn cases”. Instead, hot packs, formentations (hot moist substances applied to the skin), and local mineral water were the treatments of choice. A stay at the sanitarium cost between 8 and 12 dollars a week. Mineral baths cost extra. In 1911, the Turners sold the rest home to Dr. Lewis C. M. Porter, who joined forces with a local hospital. The rest home burned down in a fire in 1928.The postcard was published between 1905 and 1910 by H. W. Wood (Colfax Postcard Company). The postcard is a color lithographic print made in Germany. SOLD
THE CABINET CARD GALLERY 
I have a small collection of sanitarium post cards. Why, I don’t know! Just love the architecture, maybe. And the colors.
And the history of this one is most welcome.
This is the first non photographic entry that I posted in the Cabinet Card Gallery. I thought the history was interesting and I was surprised by the architecture. The sanitarium looks like a big house rather than an institution.
It was a house. The home of George D Wood, a banker who took his life following a bank scandal. Then purchased by the Turner’s a husband wife team – both Drs in Colfax. Dr. LCS Turner was associated with the Grand Hotel but this building was not the Grand. It was located directly across the street from the Grand.
Thanks for the interesting information concerning the George Wood House and the Grand Hotel. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Makes me want to break out my box and see where mine are located.