Category: Famous Hospitals
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Gorgas Hospital, Ancon, Panama
W. Paul McKinneyLouisville, Kentucky, United States A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. This well-known palindrome describes the grand vision of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps for constructing, under the flag of France, a sea level canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the late nineteenth century. Despite the best efforts of the French, the…
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St. Christopher’s Hospice
Thomas EgnewWashington, United States The twentieth century produced an extraordinary evolution in modern medicine. Burgeoning research and the rigorous application of the biomedical model generated remarkable advances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.1 Refinements in immunization decreased morbidity and mortality from common infectious diseases and the development of antibiotics provided the means to change…
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Reconstructing the world’s first hospital: The Basiliad
Thomas HeyneBoston, United States “A noble thing is philanthropy, and the support of the poor, and the assistance of human weakness…” So rang the emotional words of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen during the funeral oration delivered for his dear friend Basil of Caesarea in 379. Wishing to remind his audience of Basil’s charity towards the poor,…
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The $84.77 Hospital – St. Vincent
Terri SinnottChicago, Illinois, United States What in the United States could be purchased with $87.44 in 1881? In that year Bishop Francis Silas Marean Chatard and four Daughters of Charity1 took that sum and funded the first Catholic hospital in Indianapolis. Chatard had been born in 1834 in Baltimore and his initial calling was medicine. …
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The Hopkins Hub
Shelley CoNew York, United States It was at the site of a former insane asylum and at the discretion of a man named Johns Hopkins, a banker, philanthropist, and abolitionist, that the Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland.1 Hopkins died on Christmas Eve 1873 at age seventy-eight, and in his will left…
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Gilyarovsky and Gannushkin psychiatric hospitals in Moscow
Sergei JarginMoscow, Russia The Gilyarovsky and Gannushkin psychiatric hospitals can be discussed together because the latter was founded in 1913 as a branch of the former, becoming a separate institution only in 1931. Both hospitals are located not far from each other, near the Sokolniki Park and Yauza River.1 The Gilyarovsky hospital, founded 1808 (Fig.…
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Sant’Anna Hospital in Ferrara
Sara ZanellaCona, Italy When the Marquis Nicolò III of Este and his son Leonello were ruling Ferrara at the beginning of the fifteenth century, about twenty different confraternities of monks and friars and lay associations, had the monopoly over the citizens’ health care. In hope of future economic benefits and improved healthcare, Nicolò III of…
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Trafford General Hospital: A conjuring of spatial significance
Sang Ik SongLimerick, Ireland On July 5, 1948, the then health secretary Aneurin Bevan officially launched the British National Health Service (NHS) at Trafford’s Park Hospital.1 The picture of Nye Bevan, suited and clean cut by the bedside of Sylvia Diggory, the first NHS patient, stands iconic in the heralding of a new age of…
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Royal Victoria Military Hospital Netley
Samuel ParishNaples, Florida, United States Hospitals are built to respond to the health needs of a community. In the military, the state of healthcare is often not realized until a crisis stretches the limits of the health system. The crisis most often is war. Such was the case in mid-19th century Great Britain. The Crimean…
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The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary
Samantha WilliamsonChicago, Illinois, United States The direct ophthalmoscope debuted in Germany in 1851, ushering in the modern era of ophthalmology. Seven years later, the introduction of the laryngoscope allowed direct visualization of the airway. In 1858, on the heel of these discoveries, Edward Holmes, a Massachusetts native who had trained in Vienna and Berlin, opened…