Southern Pacific Railroad Hospital in 1907
"... The 450-bed Southern Pacific [Railroad] Hospital, at Fell and Baker streets in San Francisco, was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad and used as the major medical center for its seriously ill or injured employees from all over the West. The elegant building is a landmark in Golden Gate Park’s “Panhandle” district. Sold by the railroad in 1968, it now serves as Mercy Terrace Senior Housing Center. The hospital was being built in 1907, replacing the burnt and dynamited shell of the Southern Pacific Company Hospital on the southwest corner of Fourteenth and Mission streets. Railroad-owned hospitals were first created by the Central Pacific Railroad as it began constructing the transcontinental railroad east from Sacramento in 1863. Separate facilities were used for Chinese and non-Chinese patients. We know the names of the surgeons who practiced in these facilities, but little else. Historians have every reason to believe that they were little different from the hospitals treating the wounded during the Civil War. Amputations were frequent and death from infection was common. This began to change in 1882, when Dr. Thomas W. Huntington, a graduate of the University of Vermont and Harvard Medical College, arrived at the Sacramento hospital. Dr. Huntington was a convert to Dr. Joseph Lister’s principles of “antiseptic surgery.” ... " [More]
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