Surgeries also largely took place at home, as often as not on the kitchen or dining room table. The great majority of private patients saw their physicians at home. Even though the public’s attitude toward hospitals was gradually changing, most people still thought of a hospital as a place where only indigents and the terminally ill were treated. A second one-story building for African Americans was constructed in the rear yard. The main building contained 18 rooms furnished with electricity and heat. The new City Hospital was finished in 1895 under the administration of Mayor J.J. A year later and after considerable public debate, a site was finally selected for the new hospital on the East Commons near Linwood Cemetery (basically next door to present-day Harvey Lumber). Rankin, reported to City Council that the old hospital was past substantial repairs and was a disgrace to the city. In 1892, the Hospital Committee, composed of J.F. The Hospital Committee made a pitch every year for a new facility due to the poor conditions of the existing one and the drainage issues of South Commons. Upkeep of the wooden structures at the main hospital and the hospital building for African Americans was a constant problem. Smallpox was still a huge issue in Columbus, even requiring an ordinance by City Council in 1867, “where there is smallpox in any house within the city limits, the occupant of such house shall be required to display a red flag, in a conspicuous position.” The hospital averaged between 40 and 50 in-patients a year during the 1870s and 1880s, although the City Physicians saw hundreds of indigent patients each year who did not require hospitalization. Many of these were rural Alabamians and Floridians who made their way to Columbus in hopes of finding work in the cotton mills. Several times City Physicians expressed alarm over the number of newcomers, black and white, who were crowding into the city in search of work. Dengue fever, smallpox, tuberculosis, and pneumonia were prevalent. But wherever the slaves lived, the conditions under which they lived were extremely harsh, and illness was commonplace.įollowing the war, so many former rural slaves crowded into Southern cities that disease became a serious problem among African Americans. Usually, the owner’s wife or the overseer’s wife looked after the slaves. Out in the countryside around the town, slaves were cared for in plantation sick houses. Slaves living in town with infectious diseases, and certainly those with smallpox, would have been immediately confined to the hospital building mentioned above. Throughout the antebellum era in Columbus, separate facilities for whites and African Americans were maintained. They were looked after also by the Health Officer and the Hospital Keeper. African Americans, whether slave or free, were provided for in a separate hospital located some distance from the river in a building near the present-day Porterdale Cemetery. The new building was also intended exclusively for whites. Only paupers and persons with highly contagious diseases were confined in early hospitals, which the public universally called pest houses. The unhealthy conditions explained why people who were not indigent preferred being treated at home. There were no beds at the first City Hospital, just straw mattresses on the floor and only a fireplace for heat. Mayor Fontaine (pictured in the middle) initiated resolutions for the construction of the first city hospital. Columbus also became a chartered city that same year and John Fontaine became the new Mayor (his home, pictured to the right, was located on Front Avenue and 11th Street). Nothing, however, could keep the smallpox out of the city, and in 1836, the same year the townspeople were engaged in a local war with the Creek Indians in Alabama, it struck with a vengeance. The commissioners also appointed a new Board of Health and gave its members responsibility for making certain the streets were clean and that all residents and businesses adhered to good sanitary practices. In March, the commission gave the physicians the authority to order the Marshal to remove any suspect boat from the wharf immediately. Uruquart (pictured below on the left) Health Officers for Columbus and ordered them to inspect every steamboat arriving at the city wharf. When it struck Augusta in 1834, killing 600-700 slaves on 15 plantations, the Columbus City Commission appointed Drs. The smallpox scare of 1831 had barely subsided when cholera came sweeping down the Eastern Seaboard.
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