Tag: Winter 2015
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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…
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The Craiglockhart War Hospital of Edinburgh
Georgina WeatherdonSHO NHS Lothian hospitals Was it the ghost of autumn in that smellOf underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind,That sent a happy dream to him in hell?—Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to findSome crater for their wretchedness; who lieIn outcast immolation, doomed to dieFar from clean things or any hope…
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Maynard-Columbus Hospital
Erin K. CrouchFairbanks, Alaska, United States Finding gold in 1898 transformed a stretch of tundra just four degrees south of the Arctic Circle into a cabin city of tents, logs, and 20,000 prospectors, including claim jumpers, men of fortune, saloon keepers, and women of ill repute. That marshy patch became Nome, the largest town in…
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Hospital Municipal Sebastião Martins Alves, Lençóis, Bahia
Eleanor Stanford Hospital Municipal Sebastião Martins Alves is not a historically significant hospital. It is not well equipped, nor particularly clean (though it is not particularly dirty, either). It is not well staffed, nor is it on the cutting edge of any medical advances. (There are few cutting edges at all in Hospital Municipal Sebastião…
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The spedale of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence
Donatella LippiLuigi PadelettiFlorence, Italy The spedale of Santa Maria Nuova was founded in June 1288 by Folco di Ricovero dei Portinari, father of Dante’s Beatrice, who bought some houses in the centre of Florence to receive poor people who needed help. At first the hospital could only accept men from the large crowd of people…
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Colonial madness: The Public Hospital of Williamsburg, Virginia
Brian Andrew SharplessPullman, United States Although it is widely known that the first hospital in the United States was the Pennsylvania Hospital (founded in 1751 in Philadelphia), few may realize that the first American hospital devoted exclusively to treating the mentally ill was built in Virginia. The Public Hospital of Williamsburg (also known as Eastern…
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Royal Hospital Haslar: End of an era
Ben WilliamsonLondon, United Kingdom In March 2007 Surgeon Captain Campbell lowered the flag and led his staff on a march out of the Royal Hospital Haslar, marking the closure of the United Kingdom’s last dedicated military hospital.1 The hospital had been at the core of the care system for the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy for…
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The Endell Street Military Hospital
Anne CooperStanmore, Australia In 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany, the women of Britain were still being denied the vote. The parliament, headed by liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, had been largely indifferent to the demands for women’s suffrage. Despite public support, precedents in the colonies,1 bombings, jail terms, hunger strikes, destruction of art,…
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The 8076th: A hospital with marching orders
Abigail ClineGeorgia, Augusta, United States November 22 was an unusually cold day at the American hospital in Kumchon County. Otherwise, it was business as usual in the sixty-bed facility. The doctors were scrubbing for surgery, nurses were moving patients among the wards, X-ray technicians were developing radiographs, and the pharmacy was dispensing prescriptions. There was…
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Leith in the time of cholera – the story of Thomas Latta
George VentersEdinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom Introduction In June 1832, the editor of the Lancet thanked Dr. Thomas Latta for “the intrepidity, scientific zeal and assiduity he has displayed.”1 This was in response to Dr. Latta’s letter reporting on his treatment by intravenous saline infusion of moribund patients in the final stages of cholera. He had brought…