Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/493

Rh revolution intervened, and the needed improvements were not made until the nineteenth century.

When we consider the growth in population and wealth of nations and vaunted increase in knowledge, we can not look upon the eighteenth century as a period fruitful in hospital progress. Many new institutions were erected, it is true, but they were inadequate to the needs of the times in many respects. Among the most important establishments of this period were, in England: Westminster (1719), Guy's (1722), St. George's (1733); in Germany: the Charité in Berlin, established by Frederick II. (1710), and the Bamburg Hospital, by Bishop Van Erthral (1789); in Austria: the famous General Hospital, founded by Joseph II. (1784). Overcrowding, the prevalence of hospital gangrene and erysipelas, and the frightful mortality in many institutions made the very name hospital synonymous in the public mind with suffering and death. Yet, in spite of all this, it is from this very period that we see the development of the idea of the hospital as a necessary adjunct to medical and surgical teaching.

The history of American hospitals begins with the hospital erected by Cortez in the City of Mexico in 1524. It was remembered by the conqueror in his bequests, is still in existence as the Hospital Jesus Nazerino, and the ducal family descended from Cortez, the Dukes of Terranova y Monteleon, still exercise their prerogative of appointing its superintendents. A decade after its establishment came the Hospital of San Lazaro, accommodating 400 patients and, in 1540, the Royal Hospital, both in the City of Mexico.

Bancroft states that the law of 1541 ordered that hospitals be established in all Spanish and Indian towns. The Council of Lima (1583) made provision for the support of hospitals, and two distinct religious orders of men were founded in Mexico for hospital work.

In Canada, the Duchess of Aiguillon founded, in 1639, the Hotel Dieu, at Sillery, afterwards transferred to Quebec. The Hôtel Dieu, in Montreal, was founded in 1664; the General Hospital at Quebec in 1693.

The first hospital in the United States territory was erected about 1663 on Manhattan Island to care for ill soldiers and negroes of the East India Co. Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses for contagious diseases were established in various towns on the Atlantic coast. A permanent hospital for these ailments was built in Boston in 1717.

One of the petitioners for the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Hospital was Benjamin Franklin. The corner stone was laid in 1755, its charter having been obtained four years previously, but the structure was not completed until 1805.

The first privately endowed hospital established in the United States was the Charity, in New Orleans, founded about 1720 by a sailor named