This House of Noble Deeds: The Mount Sinai Hospital, 1852-2002

Introduction The Mount Sinai Hospital: An Overview

Introduction The Mount Sinai Hospital: An Overview ON JANUARY 15, 1852, nine men representing various Hebrew charitable organizations came together to establish the Jews’ Hospital in New York to offer free medical care to indigent Hebrews in the City who were not able to provide for themselves during their illnesses. This was the beginning of the Mount Sinai Hospital.1 Sampson Simson was unquestionably the father of Mount Sinai. He was the first president of the Board of Directors; he gave the land on which the first hospital was built; and he personally assumed many of the financial burdens of the young institution. When he resigned in February 1855 at the age of seventy-five, the other Directors sent a delegation to his home in Yonkers to beg him to reconsider, to no avail. With the founding of the organization, its leadership began a fundraising effort to secure enough money to erect a hospital building. But, as costs mounted, it was the bequest of Judah Touro for $20,000 that really ensured the timely completion of the venture. Ground was broken for the Hospital in the fall of 1853. A year and a half later, on May 17, 1855, the Jews’ Hospital was officially dedicated with a religious ceremony ; it opened to patients on June 5. This first hospital was located on West 28th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues and extended through to 27th Street. That area of the City in the mid-1850s was still rural, and vegetable gardens grew next to the Hospital. The building accommodated forty-five patients initially, but additions were built during the Civil War to house Union soldiers. The Hospital offered almost exclusively ward service—as did all hospitals at this time—but a small section was set aside for paying patients. Quality patient care was the goal of these first Hospital Directors. (The title Director was changed in 1917 to Trustee, allowing the Superintendent to take his modern title of Director of The Mount Sinai Hospital .) To meet this goal, the Directors hired a Superintendent to run the 1 daily operations of the Hospital. (Later a Matron was added to run the household end of the institution.) A pharmacy of some kind was established from the beginning, although it is unclear from the records whether a pharmacist was hired and on what basis. The Directors also sought to assemble a staff of respected and dedicated doctors. These efforts were rewarded as physicians such as Valentine and Alexander Mott, Benjamin McCready, Thomas Markoe, Willard Parker, and Israel Moses signed on early as Consulting and Attending Staff. The Resident Attending Physician, who provided the day-to-day medical care at the Hospital, was Mark Blumenthal, the physician for the Portuguese Synagogue congregation. (He and Israel Moses were the only Jewish physicians on the first staff.) Although Blumenthal maintained a private practice, he had appointed hours at the Hospital and was continually on call. For this, he received $250 the first year, and $500 in subsequent years. With only a forty-five-bed capacity, the Hospital was quickly and continuously full. Intended originally as a purely sectarian institution, 2 THIS HOUSE OF NOBLE DEEDS Sampson Simson, first President of the Jews’ Hospital, later The Mount Sinai Hospital. the Jews’ Hospital never turned away emergency patients, regardless of creed. In the first year of its existence, the Hospital admitted 216 patients , only five of whom were born in this country. The largest group, numbering 110, was from Germany. The Hospital was a completely charitable enterprise; the Directors relied on gifts from friends and members of the Hospital Society, as well as on payments from the City, to provide enough to subsidize the care. The 1860s were hectic years for the Hospital on 28th Street. The City was racked with violent riots in 1863 when citizens protested the draft procedure for the Union Army. Ironically, the injured rioters were taken in and treated at the Hospital alongside wounded Union soldiers, whom the Hospital cared for in large numbers. These turbulent years at the Hospital proved two things: the Hospital was clearly no longer sectarian, and it needed to move. The Directors feared that, if they retained the limiting name of Jews’ Hospital, the Hospital would be considered ineligible for State support. So, in 1866, the charter of the Hospital was amended by an Act of the State Legislature that designated as the new name...