An engaging, easy-to-grasp history of a fascinating place in New York City-- and really, a microcosm of the city itself. I tended to find myself drawn to the personal stories rather than the broad strokes (this book had both), but I'd recommend it for anyone who is interested in the history of NYC.

When someone mentions Bellevue, most people have an image of a hospital for the insane. But Bellevue Hospital in New York City has been a haven for the ill for decades and it is the birthplace of some of medicine's most important innovations. David Oshinsky takes readers into Bellevue's exam rooms and basement laboratories from its birth as a public hospital and poorhouse to its development of the first ambulance corps to recent history when the hospital served as a refuge for patients with AIDS and was the last NYC hospital to keep its doors open in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Reading Bellevue reminded me why I enjoy good nonfiction so much. This book presents the specific story of one hospital and a much larger one of New York City over hundreds of years and the medical progress that we have made in that time. For those of us living now, it's difficult to imagine an era when we wouldn't go to a hospital. But for many years, those with means would be seen in the comfort of their homes and hospitals were only for those who truly had no other choice, like yellow fever victims in the 18th century. Bellevue was the place for patients no one else wanted to take in throughout its history. These doctors treated soldiers injured during the Civil War, people poisoned from bad alcohol during Prohibition, and drug addicts.

Bellevue doctors and surgeons were the first to develop an ambulance corps in the United States, figure out how to perform surgery on a battlefield, and spearhead the idea of public health to keep people from needing the hospital in the first place. But Oshinsky doesn't shy away from discussing the failings of Belleveue's staff either. Frank Hamilton was the surgeon summoned to treat President Garfield after he was shot. Unfortunately, Hamilton (and some of his Bellevue colleagues) were the last holdouts regarding sterile surgery procedures. His refusal to clean his hands or surgical instruments likely played a role in Garfield's demise. Readers will also find out just why Bellevue has a reputation as a mental hospital (although Oshinsky seems to downplay this aspect). It was a place where many advancements in mental health occurred, alongside some truly awful treatment decisions. Dr. Lauretta Bender is a prime example of a doctor who made some questionable choices. She took over the children's psychiatric ward in the 1930s and regularly used electroshock therapy on her young patients, never acknowledging the ethical problems with this treatment.

Bellevue is a fairly long and impressive look at hundreds of years of history, both medical and otherwise. As I read through the final chapters, though, I wish that Oshinsky had given us more information about the storied hospital in the last fifty years. I would have loved to read more about the things that the innovators at Bellevue are accomplishing now and what they hope to contribute to medicine and to New York City in the future.


Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
By David M. Oshinsky
Doubleday September 2016
384 pages
Read via Netgalley

A history of our insanity

Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky (Doubleday, $30).

David Oshinsky, who won the 2006 nonfiction Pulitzer for his history of polio, now takes a look at the New York institution synonymous with poverty and mental illness.

In Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital, what Oshinsky discovers is that, despite the well-known reputation for being the worst place to end up, in fact, Bellevue is the epitome of what a public hospital ought to be, treating all comers with the best they have to offer. He describes Bellevue as being the city itself writ small, the demographics changing over time but always fully representative of the state of the city. While far from comprehensive as either a social or a medical history, it is nonetheless fascinating.