1855

Sims’ Woman’s Hospital opens in NYC as a charity hospital (Marr, 22), albeit staffed entirely by men (Nimura, 195). Following a state appropriation of $10K the following year, it became the Woman’s Hospital of the State of New York (McGregor, 69). Impetus came from philanthropic women reformer, led by Sarah Doremus, for whom the hospital was part of a moral, Protestant mission allied with sanitary reform (McGregor, 69-72). Thirty women formed the original Board of Managers; male Board of Governors for the new facility completed in 1868; “Serving women of the middle classes as well as poor women was a given at the institution (79). . . . Some have asserted that medicine had gained a stronger authority even before scientific practice – that is, laboratory science – was integral to the practice of medicine.  The Woman’s Hospital is one such example.  It used relatively modern medical practices, including clinical treatment and specialization, even before the implementation of scientific medicine.  Neither anesthesia nor antisepsis were yet in use when the Woman’s Hospital opened. . . . Still the hospital in its early years used many surgical therapies and admitted a high percentage of patients from the middle classes” (82). Sims understood his treatment of vesico-vaginal fistula and the creation of the hospital as “a kind of religious mission” (95).  He argued that “it was the hand of God that propelled him to success.  Hence, he came to see his work in gynecological surgery as having a divine origin” (97). Sims’ assistant surgeon, Thomas Addis Emmet, a southerner from Virginia, was a strong proponent of Irish rights who graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1850 (100-101). Elizabeth Blackwell countered with her lecture/pamphlet, “On the Medical Education of Women,” foundational to her NY Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, which opened in 1857 with support of Florence Nightingale, Henry Beecher, and Horace Greeley (Nimura, 196-203). Marie Zakrezewska was the attending physician and sister Emily performed the surgery.  Elizabeth back to England in fall of 1858 for lecture tour to raise funds, declines to administer Nightingale’s fund, and was tempted to stay on and open Women’s Hospital there.