Skodsborg Badesanatorium: An Adventist Health Resort on the Fringe of Danish Public Healthcare 1898–1992

Abstract

Summary Today healthcare in Denmark is overwhelmingly public, but around 1900 much was left to religious institutions. One of the largest and most long-lived was Skodsborg Badesanatorium, which survived from 1898 to 1992. Founded on the Seventh-day Adventists’ health principles, the sanatorium introduced therapies and medical ideas, which were frowned upon in Denmark around 1900. The sanatorium had to navigate between alternative and orthodox medicine, constantly defining itself as alternative enough to provide what patients could not get at the public hospitals, but orthodox enough to be scientifically reliable. The article analyses how the therapy at the sanatorium was presented, comparing alternative and orthodox medicine. Likewise, the sanatorium’s relation to public healthcare is analysed from its extensive administrative material. This article sheds light on private healthcare institutions, which are largely neglected in Danish historical health research, and thereby explores the space between public and private healthcare and orthodox and non-orthodox medicine.