The Voluntary Hospital — How Can It Survive in the Modern World?

Abstract

IN 1811 the citizens of Boston, led by a minister, a physician and a surgeon, established the Massachusetts General Hospital. The McLean Hospital, for patients with mental diseases, was opened in 1818, and the hospital for medical and surgical illnesses in 1821. Thus was sickness divorced from poverty and crime, from the almshouse and the prison.The first state hospital, the Worcester Lunatic Hospital, was not built until 1830, twelve years after McLean Hospital; the Boston City Hospital was opened in 1864, forty-three years after the Massachusetts General Hospital. Thus did private foresight, initiative and action precede political recognition. What . . .