Editorial Content for Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

Started as an almshouse on the outskirts of New York City in 1736, Bellevue opened its doors to the sick and dying during various epidemics and expanded in bits and pieces. Today it is one of the region's most important medical resources, known for the care it offers to the rich and famous, and the poorest of the poor.

Any hospital extant for so many years will have gone through a myriad of changes, as NYU History Professor David Oshinsky (POLIO: An American Story) relates. In the early 1800s, doctoring in America was the province of barbers; major surgery was considered tantamount to a death sentence. Standard medical practice included leeching to release toxic “humours,” and the use of poisons like calomel, or mercury chloride, to effect violent, possibly life-threatening purges. Gradually a system of physicians, specialists, nurses and teachers evolved, and in these developments Bellevue was innovative.

"From starting the country’s first professional nursing school, it retains its reputation as a medical training facility. Oshinsky reminds us that Bellevue is, above all, 'the flagship institution of America’s largest city.'"

One notable influence was Bellevue surgeon Stephen Smith, who initiated the use of ambulances that proved their worth during a violent clash between Irish Catholic and Protestant factions in the city. The Bellevue ambulance pick-ups garnered positive attention in the press at a time when the ill or injured might just otherwise languish, maybe die, on the pavement. Smith, who coined the term “preventive medicine,” also bullied city authorities to significantly raise the standard of sanitation in one of the most crowded cities in the world, where one privy might be used by up to 100 people and slaughterhouses were still placed in residential neighborhoods.

For many outside of New York City, the name “Bellevue” is synonymous with “mental hospital,” so commonly have jokes been made about its patients and purpose. At first housing what were known as “lunatics” and “idiots” for short periods for observation, Bellevue added an official psychiatric unit in 1933, offering treatment by European-trained refugee doctors. Dr Lauretta Bender was the widow of Bellevue’s first director of psychiatric research, Dr. Paul Schilder, a star pupil of Sigmund Freud. She was drawn to the then-new investigations into childhood schizophrenia, and a treatment used in Europe: ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy. ECT, which Bender used in Bellevue on children to make them calmer and more amenable to other forms of treatment, was eventually discredited. However, as Oshinsky fairly reports, it has re-emerged as a therapy in recent years.

The facility’s proximity to the subculture haunts of Greenwich Village resulted in a parade of famous patients, including Norman Mailer (after he stabbed his wife), Eugene O’Neill (who accessed the ward for alcoholics), and Charlie “Bird” Parker (after suicide attempts). The killer of John Lennon was consigned there immediately after the crime, along with Lennon’s corpse.

Today Bellevue, which has risen to recent crises such as AIDS and ebola, retains its dedication to “serve the poorer classes of a constantly evolving city.” It treats prisoners, immigrants, and anyone who has no means of payment. From starting the country’s first professional nursing school, it retains its reputation as a medical training facility. Oshinsky reminds us that Bellevue is, above all, “the flagship institution of America’s largest city.”