Tag: Famous Hospitals
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Bimarstan al-Mansouri
Mona Youssef Cairo, Egypt Around 1248 AD, when Islam was at its prime and the Nile was wide, and its seven delta branches coursed through the land with a heavy network of connecting channels in place of the two branches left today, there was the Bimaristan al-Mansouri, with water channels from the Nile running through the hospital…
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A lesson in horizontality: El Hospital San Vicente de Paúl in Medellin, Colombia
Moisés EnghelbergNew York, United States This is not the story about another hospital, rebuilt from rubble after an earthquake. It is not even a story about perseverance, as much as it is about putting the pieces back together. It is also a story about peculiarity and geometry. The Hospital San Vicente de Paúl in Medellin,…
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Zofiówka
Mary V. SeemanToronto, CanadaMałgorzata GrochowinaWarsaw, Poland In 1938, there were 14,000 psychiatric beds in Poland, distributed over thirty-one institutions. One of these institutions was Zofiówka, dedicated to the care of Jewish patients with nervous and mental illness.1 It was opened in 1908 thanks to a donation by Zofia Endelman, for whom the facility was named.2…
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Baghdad Medical City
Lynn SadlerPittsboro, North Carolina, United States Can humans build and destroy simultaneously? Can they erect a gigantic, sprawling hospital complex as bombs drop, scud missiles home in, and anti-aircraft fire fills the air with flak? The Medical City of Central Baghdad perhaps cleanses some of our views of history. Few of us are aware that…
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The Montreal Neurological Hospital
Louise Fabiani Montreal, Canada The time was 1928 and the patient was a forty-three year old mother of six. After nearly thirty years of headaches and seizures, she had started to have problems with her right eye. A young neurosurgeon examined her and found evidence of a right frontal-lobe tumor, which had to be removed…
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The Heritage Craft Schools and Hospitals for Crippled Children
Lisa PruittMurfreesboro, Tennessee, United States At the beginning of the twentieth century, following a decade of work among the London poor, Grace Hannam Kimmins (1870-1954) envisioned an idyllic rural retreat, a healing haven for children crippled by diseases associated with urban poverty. In 1903, she realized her vision by founding The Heritage Craft Schools and…
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St. Patrick’s Hospital: A legacy of Jonathan Swift
Linda SlusserWellington, Ohio, United States Today, St. Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin, known for the innovative care of its patients provides “Ireland’s largest, independent, not-for-profit mental health services.”1 When founded in 1745 by the bequest of Jonathan Swift, it was the first psychiatric hospital to be built in Ireland mandated for the care of “Idiots and…
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Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
Krutika ParasarNew Jersey, United States In February 2007 a highly damaging scandal shook the renowned Walter Reed Army Medical Center to its very foundations. In a series of articles about the facility, the Washington Post reported deplorable infrastructure and unsanitary conditions in outpatient rooms and bureaucratic delays resulting in inefficiency and abandonment of soldiers.1 The…
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The Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune, a testament to the health benefits of religious charity and vineyards
Kate Elizabeth ShipmanSudarshan RamachandranBirmingham, United Kingdom Introduction Charitable hospitals are fairly ubiquitous worldwide and are often associated with religion. Indeed the earliest known institutes devoted to healing were Egyptian temples, followed by ancient Greek temples devoted to Asclepius. The modern idea of hospitals providing in-patient care stems from Christian charitable institutions founded following an ecumenical…
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Sydney Hospital
Julie GianakonPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States In May of 1797, growing discontent among sailors of the Royal Navy erupted into the infamous Mutiny of the Nore. William Redfern was nineteen years old and the surgeon’s mate on board the HMS Standard. Sympathetic to the sailors’ demands for better pay and living conditions, he had urged the…