Summary of David M. Oshinsky's Bellevue

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822544697

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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