49o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Louis, afterwards an officer in the company of the Indies, who left a small 

 fortune as a foundation. It was destroyed by fire in 1779 and the new 

 Charity Hospital, now the City Hospital, was endowed in 1780. This 

 is now one of the most important hospitals in America and receives 

 over 8,000 patients annually. 



The oldest hospital in New York City is the New York Hospital, 

 founded in 1770 by private subscriptions. It was allowed £800 

 for a period of twenty years by the Municipal Assembly. The state 

 legislature was more generous, allowing it £4,000 annually in 1795 and 

 increasing it in 1796 to £5,000. Bellevue originated in the infirmary 

 attached to the New York City Alms House. It was erected on its 

 present site in 1811. Among the most important sectarian hospitals 

 in New York are St. Vincent's, 1849, St. Luke's, 1850, and Mt. Sinai, 

 1852. 



Fifty-six men of Boston in 1810 addressed a circular letter concern- 

 ing the establishment in that city of a hospital for the poor. Jackson, 

 Warren, and other medical lights of the day, worked out plans, and 

 the institution, known as the Massachusetts General Hospital, was 

 opened in 1821. 



Of existing Baltimore institutions, St. Joseph's was established by 

 the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1864; the Hebrew Hospital in 1867. The 

 Johns Hopkins Hospital, chartered in 1867, was opened in 1889. 



The District of Columbia had four hospitals during the cholera epi- 

 demic of 1832. The Washington Infirmary received congressional aid 

 and it was proposed to enlarge it into a hospital, but it was burned 

 during the Civil War. The Government Hospital for the Insane was 

 established in 1852 to care for insane cases. Providence Hospital was 

 established in 1861, largely through the efforts of Dr. Toner. Freed- 

 man's Hospital was opened in 1862 and Columbia Hospital in 1866. 

 During the war sixty military hospitals were located in Washington 

 and in the vicinity. 



In the last half century the spread of hospitals throughout the world 

 received a marvelous impetus. The role of bacteriology as applied to 

 preventive medicine, surgery and therapeutics is one that must be ac- 

 corded first place in advancing modern hospital efficiency. And in this 

 connection the part played by Virchow's teaching of cellular pathology 

 is a factor of much importance in its influence on medical thought 

 reflected in hospital laboratory methods. 



The Franco-Prussian and our own Civil War had much to do with 

 directing men's attention to the problem of hospital construction and 

 military surgery. Improved technique in nursing evolved the modern 

 training school and created a distinctly new profession. Even before 

 Lister's time, Florence Nightingale believed that soap and water and 

 plenty of fresh air and sunlight would lessen mortality from hospital 



