Doctor Publishes Book Detailing History Of Children's Memorial Hospital
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A new book offers a fascinating glimpse into the history of one of Chicago's oldest and most renowned hospitals.
WBBM Newsradio's Regine Schlesinger reports, as part of the series "Images of America," Dr. Stanford Shulman compiled photographs of Children's Memorial Hospital – now Lurie Children's Hospital – tracing the hospital's history, starting as an 8-bed cottage in 1882, when Chicago was a city bursting at the seams.
"There was a lot of disease, there was a lot of crowding, and a lot of poverty," he said.
Shulman, a longtime doctor at Children's, said the original hospital offered relief for sick kids, providing what was – at the time – state-of-the-art medical treatment.
"The therapy of tuberculosis consisted of fresh air and sunshine," he said. "The cure rates that were documented in the 1890s and 1900s, with that kind of therapy plus good nutrition, is astounding."
Julia Foster Porter opened the original hospital in 1882 after her 13-year-old son, Maurice, died of rheumatic fever, and she realized there was no hospital in Illinois that specialized in treating children.
At the turn of the century, the hospital moved to the parcel of land in Lincoln Park where it stood until it moved to Streeterville in 2012, and was renamed the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital.
Shulman's book "Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago" traces not only the hospital's history, but the evolution of medicine over the past 130 years.