Summary of David M. Oshinsky's Bellevue

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 At the southern tip of Fifth Avenue, in the heart of Greenwich Village, sits the leafy oasis known as Washington Square. It has been a landmark for New Yorkers for years, but its iconic arch, imposing fountain, and flowered walkways provide no hint of its tumultuous past.
#2 The first hospital in North America was built in Philadelphia in 1752. However, many consider Bellevue to be the first, as it was built on the site of a small infirmary built for soldiers overcome by bad smells and filth in colonial America.
#3 The land they chose had a checkered past. It had first belonged to a Dutch settler named Jacobus Kip, who built a house there in 1641. In the 1700s, Kip’s heirs had divided the land, selling one parcel to a local merchant who named it Bel-Vue for its rolling fields and river vistas.
#4 Yellow fever is a disease transmitted by the bite of the female Aedes aegypti mosquito. It first appeared in the Americas in the summer of 1793, when it struck Philadelphia, the young nation’s capital. It would kill thousands of people in New York City in the summer of 1795.

Sujets

• Colonisation
• History
• Histoire
• Social History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544697
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on David Oshinsky's Bellevue
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18 Insights from Chapter 19 Insights from Chapter 20
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

At the southern tip of Fifth Avenue, in the heart of Greenwich Village, sits the leafy oasis known as Washington Square. It has been a landmark for New Yorkers for years, but its iconic arch, imposing fountain, and flowered walkways provide no hint of its tumultuous past.

#2

The first hospital in North America was built in Philadelphia in 1752. However, many consider Bellevue to be the first, as it was built on the site of a small infirmary built for soldiers overcome by bad smells and filth in colonial America.

#3

The land they chose had a checkered past. It had first belonged to a Dutch settler named Jacobus Kip, who built a house there in 1641. In the 1700s, Kip’s heirs had divided the land, selling one parcel to a local merchant who named it Bel-Vue for its rolling fields and river vistas.

#4

Yellow fever is a disease transmitted by the bite of the female Aedes aegypti mosquito. It first appeared in the Americas in the summer of 1793, when it struck Philadelphia, the young nation’s capital. It would kill thousands of people in New York City in the summer of 1795.

#5

The Miasma Theory, which blamed illnesses on chemical agents from decayed matter, was still being used in the late 1800s. But some doctors argued that the disease was contagious, like smallpox or influenza, and could spread from person to person through the victim’s breath or clothing.

#6

In New York, the health committee appointed a special health committee in 1793 to prevent the infectious distemper from being introduced into the city. The committee hired a man named Alexander Anderson to be their resident physician.

#7

Anderson became a physician at Bel-Vue, and while he was initially excited about the position, he was soon overwhelmed by the epidemic’s toll. He spent three months there, witnessing more than a hundred deaths.

#8

The world of the American physician in the late eighteenth century was primitive, to say the least. British medicine was divided into three categories: physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. The physician was the elite, while the surgeon and apothecary were considered inferior.

#9

American society, by contrast, was more provincial and democratic. It barely recognized medicine as a profession in this era, and most physicians had begun their careers as apprentices.

#10

American physicians in 1800 had some knowledge of Western medical tradition, which endorsed the so-called doctrine of humors. The body’s four primary fluids were blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Too much blood was a bad thing, causing fevers, inflammation, and pain.

#11

The most popular weapon in the fight against disease was calomel, or mercury chloride, a cathartic that was extremely effective. It was used to treat everything from bleeding patients to children who puked volcanic amounts of drool.

#12

Alexander Anderson, the first doctor at Bellevue, was also the first to die from the disease. He had taken responsibility for society’s most fragile members, and was left with little but despair.

#13

Bellevue Hospital, which was built on the grounds of the Bel-Vue Estate, earned a fearsome reputation as a pesthouse, almshouse, and death house.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

New York City has been dealing with the mob for years. In 1788, a crowd stormed the city jail to lynch several men held there in protective custody. The so-called Doctors’ Riot ended with a full-scale military assault.

#2

The New York riot in 1799 was the result of a tense period in the city between the writing of the Federal Constitution and its successful ratification by the states. Some saw the lawlessness as an example of what a strong government was meant to control, while others thought the authorities had gone too far.

#3

Hosack was a doctor who lived in New York City. He was a member of the elite society there, and his patients included Alexander Hamilton, DeWitt Clinton, steamboat inventor Robert Fulton, and Vice President Aaron Burr.

#4

Hosack was a surgeon who was raised in New York City. He went to Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and then became a professor of materia medica at Columbia College in New York. He eventually became a visiting physician at the almshouse infirmary in New York.

#5

By 1800, the almshouse was holding more than double the number of inmates it was meant to. The view from within was even worse. Most entries in Ezra Stiles Ely’s diary included a description of the almshouse infirmary, where the groans of agony met the stink of disease.

#6

The city needed to expand its almshouse, which was located far away from respectable glances. The almshouse was fused with the pesthouse, which had been built for young Alexander Anderson, a free Negro, as his apprentice.

#7

The Almshouse at Bellevue was opened in 1816. It housed the city’s welfare institutions, and cost $421,109. It was the largest New York had ever seen.

#8

New York’s population grew rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century, as it became the leading port of entry for immigrants fleeing famine and persecution. By the Civil War, close to half the city’s population would be foreign-born.

#9

Five Points was a heavily Irish neighborhood in New York City that was home to many German immigrants and former African slaves. It was known for its overcrowding, and its most infamous rookery was a converted brewery near the Collect landfill.

#10

In 1832, cholera came to New York.