Tag: Spring 2015
-
The General Hospital—All are welcome
Jan KardaunAmsterdam, Netherlands Most people associate a hospital with medical care but would like to stay there as briefly as possible. In 1656, King Louis XIV of France created a General Hospital for all who needed care. It was spacious, elegantly designed, situated at the outskirts of the city of Paris, and free. But there…
-
Chonbuk National University Hospital
Esther MgbemejeJeonju, South Korea Located in the capital of North Jeolla province,1 Chonbuk National University Hospital was built in 1909 by the South Korean government. It was established during the last days of the Joseon dynasty, and was the second medical clinic built in the Jeolla province when little medical aid was available for its…
-
The unique journal of the USS Red Rover
Emily MooreAmes, Iowa, United States The USS Red Rover was commissioned on December 26, 1862, by the Union as the first US Navy hospital ship. It had been built in 1859 as a commercial use wooden side-wheel river steamer and purchased in 1861 by the Confederate States of America. In 1862 it was bombarded and captured…
-
The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
Elie MatarSydney, Australia When His Royal Highness Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, landed on the shores of Sydney on January 21, 1868, he was received with thunderous ovation from the thousands gathered to witness the arrival of the first member of the Royal family to Australia. In light of…
-
The Meath Hospital, Dublin
Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland Narratives of venerable teaching hospitals are usually upbeat and positive, delineating progress and advances made in the face of adversity and hardship. This is also the case for Meath Hospital, the most celebrated of the wave of voluntary hospitals founded in Dublin in the eighteenth century.1 Established in 1753 as a charitable…
-
The “Samariterhaus” Hospital and the “Institute for Experimental Cancer Research” in Heidelberg
Annette TuffsHeidelberg, Germany Dedicated to another great German Cancer Surgeon, J.R. Siewert, who has introduced me to the legacy of Vinzenz Czerny On the 25th of September 1906, a large crowd of Heidelberg citizens expectantly lined the town boulevard to the university’s Great Hall, waiting to cheer on the Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden and his wife…
-
Craiglockhart Hospital, head above the parapet
Annabelle SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands You are in World War I, back in its notorious trenches, hearing uninterrupted shooting, deafened from the shells, smelling cordite and dead bodies, fellow soldiers fall back on you, wounded or dead, grey with mud. War neurosis, nervous breakdown, neurasthenia or “shellshock” follows you like your own shadow. How on earth can…
-
Hillman Hospital
A.J. WrightBirmingham, Alabama, United States Alabama’s first operating medical school, the proprietary Graefenberg Medical Institute in the small town of Dadeville, opened in 1852. That school closed at the beginning of the Civil War. The Medical College of Alabama had been chartered by the state in 1856, but no funds provided; a charter from the…
-
Hybridity in Hong Kong: The Tung Wah Hospital
Angharad FletcherHong Kong, China In his 1895 government report on the recent outbreak of bubonic plague, Dr Philip Bernard Chenery Ayres, last Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong, berated the Tung Wah Hospital for its dangerous and insanitary conditions. Ayres listed the many “medical and surgical atrocities” he had witnessed within the walls of this “menace…
-
The origin and evolution of Padua hospitals
Alberto ZanattaFabio ZampieriPadua, Italy The hospital San Francesco Grande in Padua was founded by the Piombino jurist Baldo Bonafari (†1418) and his wife Sibilla de Cetto (†1421), who also financed the construction of the San Francesco church behind the hospital. Work on the hospital began in 1414, and its first patients could be admitted by…