How to retain paragraph formatting passing string from php to javascript [duplicate]

Ok here we go. I am pulling a string list from a MySQL table data that looks like this:

1 Lumbar facet syndrome, bilateral
2 Bilateral knee arthropathy
3 Bilateral hip arthropathy
4 Right shoulder arthropathy, posttraumatic,
5 Chondromalacia of patella
6 Diabetes mellitus with diabetic nephropathy
7 Lower back pain
8 OA

I would like to retain this formatting as I need to put this information into a text box.

The program that I am working in has a pluggin system that allows the system to inject javascript into a form page. So the pluggin looks like this

 function newForm_javascript_onload() {

     //This part grabs the data from the MySQL table. 
    $sql = "SELECT dictation FROM form_dictation WHERE id = ? ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 1";
    $stmDia = array($id);
    $list = sqlQuery($sql,$stmDia);
    $list = $list['dictation'];

     //Here I chop out the part of the text that I need for the text box
    $diaBegin = strpos($list, "Active Problems") + 26;
    $diaEnd = strpos($list, "Plan") - 4;
    $diaLength = strlen($list);
    $diaChop = ($diaEnd - $diaLength); 
    $diaNar = substr($list, $diaBegin, $diaChop);


    //This is the part that gets injected into the page
    echo "
         var diagnoses = '$diaNar';  //This is where formatting breaks the code

         //This part should populate the textarea

         if(form_diagFac1){
          document.getElementById('form_diagFac1').value = diagnoses;
         }


    ";


  }    

I have tried searching the forum but no one has posted a question like this.

Where the var is I have tried:

var diagnosis  = escape('$diaNar'); //This is where php passes data to java

I know I can strip out all the formatting so that it appears as a paragraph.

However, will I need to create a loop that reads each line?