Cincinnati’s Base Hospital No. 25: A Community’s Contribution to World War I
- Cincinnati’s Base Hospital No. 25A Community’s Contribution to World War I
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the United States Army Medical Department had a problem: it did not have enough healthcare providers. In preparation for deploying a large army during the Great War, the United States Army Medical Department developed the Affiliated Hospital Program—a unique plan to establish field hospitals in collaboration with civilian academic medical centers and their communities. The City of Cincinnati responded to the call by establishing Base Hospital No. 25, an exemplar of the program. The unit overcame staffing challenges that were complicated by anti-German hysteria and filled the roles with Cincinnati’s volunteer citizen soldiers. They deployed to Allerey, France, in 1918; spent six months overwhelmed by large numbers of ill patients; and returned home to a grateful public in 1919.
the affiliated hospital program
As war spread across Europe in August 1914, it quickly became apparent to the Army Medical Department that they lacked sufficient numbers of health-care providers to respond should the United States enter the war. In fact, with only 403 nurses1 and 491 physicians2 on active duty, the department [End Page 9] was in no position to care for a rapidly expanding force, much less project healthcare onto the battlefield. The availability of nurses in particular was complicated by the fact that nurses were women only, and women could not be drafted—they had to be recruited and then volunteer.
While the Wilson administration’s government spent 1915 doing its best to avoid the war, wealthy American expatriates in Paris wished to sponsor a hospital to provide care to combat casualties in France. Former Ohio governor Myron T. Herrick, the ambassador to France, recruited Cleveland surgeon George Crile to assemble and lead a group of healthcare providers that would deploy as a part of an unaffiliated, nongovernmental hospital known as Ambulance Américaine. The hospital was staffed with nurses and physicians from Crile’s Cleveland Lakeside Hospital, which was advantageous because they already knew each other and worked well together. For three months in an empty Parisian school, Ambulance Américaine provided care to casualties who had evacuated from the battlefield on the western front.3 Consistent with Wilson’s expectations that all Americans remain neutral, Ambulance Américaine accepted casualties from all belligerent nations.
In October 1915, Crile lectured on his deployment experiences at the Symposium on Military Surgery at the Clinical Congress of Surgeons of North America. He proposed that the army adopt a similar model to the one that had been successfully employed by Lakeside Hospital to staff Ambulance Américaine, calling on cities to fund and outfit hospital units whose staffs were compiled from their own academic medical centers.4 The surgeon general of the US Army, Major General William Gorgas, immediately recognized the potential of the concept to provide much needed manpower and structure, and the Affiliated Hospital Program was created.5
Should the United States enter the war, this contingency plan called for outfitting 1,000-bed base hospitals with staffs of 35 physicians, 100 nurses, 200 enlisted men, and a small number of civilians who would serve as dietitians, various technicians, and administrative staff.6 The hospitals cost approximately $50,000 to equip, and the funds would be raised locally. When [End Page 10] required, the hospitals would be transferred to the army and deployed to rear areas, where soldier skills would not be necessary and both staff and patients would be safe. The staffs of hospitals would enlist in the army for the duration of the national emergency.
the sinking of the lusitania and the rise of anti-german sentiments in cincinnati
On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner, killing 1,198 passengers and crew—128 of whom were American. In the succeeding months, the sinking was perceived by the American public as particularly barbaric and evil. Propaganda that portrayed Germany negatively was effectively used to unify Americans with the Allied powers’ cause. Neutral opinions about whom to support in the war were replaced by very...
