Within the latter half of the nineteenth century Santa Barbara grew to become a mecca for folks affected by persistent respiratory sicknesses. The publication of books, equivalent to Charles Nordhoff’s California: For Well being, Pleasure, and Residence in 1873, performed an necessary position in popularizing Santa Barbara as the last word vacation spot for therapeutic and pure palliation within the American creativeness. The rumors of the area’s rejuvenating local weather converged with technological advances of the time. The completion of Stearns Wharf in 1872 and the constructing of a railroad connection in 1877 opened Santa Barbara to settlement, tourism, and commerce on a a lot larger scale. Lured by the guarantees of salubrious climate and impressed by the rumour accounts of extraordinary recoveries from “consumption and the ailments of the throat and lungs,” 1000’s settled within the Santa Barbara space.
Town, nonetheless, was remarkably unprepared to supply medical care to a rising inhabitants of chronically unwell folks. It turned out that sunshine and contemporary air alone couldn’t treatment severe sicknesses; Santa Barbara wanted correct medical amenities. The absence of hospitals within the metropolis was notably painful for the parents residing in poverty. This sentiment was expressed emphatically on the pages of Santa Barbara Weekly Press in 1874. An op-ed titled “An Infirmary” said, “We wish some place to bestow our indigent sick; people who find themselves right here with out cash sufficient to pay the expense of residing, or energy sufficient to work for it. People who find themselves ‘broke’ in pocket and structure, can’t after all be accommodated on the inns and boarding homes, operating over with paying prospects.”
Recognizing the pressing want for a medical facility in Santa Barbara, the Daughters of Charity, who had operated a faculty and orphanage within the metropolis since 1858, decided to open a small infirmary in 1877. The infirmary was positioned on West Carrillo Road, close to the positioning of St. Vincent’s orphanage. The infirmary was a modest however earnest endeavor. It provided town’s residents a spot of compassionate care, attentive rehabilitation, and therapeutic. Since its opening, the infirmary offered important inpatient care to chronically unwell folks and the reasonable phrases of the infirmary’s remedy allowed the poor to entry medical assist.
The native press welcomed the information of the infirmary’s opening. The 1877 Santa Barbara Weekly Press article titled “House for Invalids” celebrated the inauguration of the medical facility, crediting the Catholic nuns for his or her contribution to town’s fledgling public well being infrastructure: “The Sisters of Charity have rented a home on Carrillo Road which they intend to transform into a house for invalids who go to Santa Barbara and require the care and a focus of nurses.” Highlighting the significance of the infirmary to the folks of Santa Barbara, the article didn’t fail to say that the daughters had been the primary to reply the decision to open an inpatient medical facility within the metropolis: “An infirmary has been talked about in Santa Barbara at a number of totally different instances, however till current nothing has been performed.”
The small infirmary had a huge impact on the area people. This turns into evident from the extant firsthand accounts of people that benefited from the care that they acquired on the infirmary.
Such was the story of Mary A. Bliss, whose testimony was preserved on the pages of the 1914 difficulty of the Santa Barbara Each day Press newspaper. Bliss recalled the story of her household’s arrival in Santa Barbara in 1876. “Like a lot of the earlier residents,” Bliss was recorded saying, “her household introduced an invalid (a chronically unwell particular person) to Santa Barbara” with the expectation that the area’s local weather would do wonders for his or her restoration. Nevertheless, after settling at a ranch simply exterior of town, the doctor who handled the affected person insisted that they need to transfer into the city to profit from the currents of contemporary air coming from the ocean. That is when the Bliss household found “that there was no hospital in Santa Barbara.” Fortuitously, the Daughters of Charity had already been working their infirmary the place the Bliss household discovered “a cushty residence” for his or her unwell relative.
In 1891, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital welcomed its first sufferers in a 25-bed facility. The development of the hospital signified a serious milestone within the historical past of Santa Barbara’s public well being companies. Cottage Hospital continued to develop in each the breadth of its companies and nationwide renown. All of the whereas, the daughters’ small infirmary continued to confess new sufferers and serve folks of all incomes effectively into the early twentieth century. Notably, the infirmary offered extra beds in the course of the outbreak of the infamous world influenza pandemic of 1918 in Santa Barbara. In 1924, St. Vincent’s orphanage moved from its historic location on De La Vina Road to a brand new and far larger constructing on what was then Hollister Avenue. With this transfer, the Daughters of Charity introduced the historical past of Santa Barbara’s first infirmary to a delicate finish.
Sergey Salushchev has a PhD in historical past from UC Santa Barbara and is at present a researcher and archivist at St. Vincent’s. This text relies on his analysis within the archives in St. Vincent’s in Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Historic Museum.
