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Nothing being more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than its hour, being stricken with a dangerous bodily malady, but sane of mind, I desire to settle my affairs, explaining how I intend that my last will be carried out by testamentary executor…a sale shall be made of all that remains, which, together with my small lot, I bequeath to serve in perpetuity to the founding of a hospital for the sick of the City of New Orleans, without anyone being able to change my purpose, and to secure the things necessary to succor the sick.

These words written more than 250 years ago are part of the Last Will and Testament of Jean Louis dated November 16, 1735. Jean Louis, a French seaman who built boats in New Orleans, bequeathed his holdings to the founding and maintenance of Charity Hospital, a hospital for the indigent sick of the colony of New Orleans.

The Beginnings of Charity Hospital
Charity Hospital opened it doors at Chartres and Bienville streets on May 10, 1736. It is the second oldest continuing public hospital in the United States. The oldest is Bellevue in New York which opened its doors on March 31, 1736, 1 1/2 months before Charity. Charity Hospital was initially called Hospital of Saint John or L’Hospital des Pauvres de la Charite` (Hospital for the Poor). There were a lot of poor in New Orleans at that time. The original settlers of the colony in 1718 were recruited from French jails, streets and poorhouses when appeals to other members of French society failed.

Charity Hospital outgrew its first location and was moved to a second building in the year 1743 near a ship-turn basin at the edge of town now known as Basin Street. It fronted the St. Peter Cemetery which was just at the edge of the early city but within the ramparts. (The St. Louis Cemetery 1 was later built in 1789 when the St. Peter Cemetery was full!) In 1779 this structure was nearly destroyed by a hurricane. Only the kitchen and storehouse was left standing and served as the hospital quarters holding six beds.

Charity was rebuilt a third time in 1785 in the same location near the basin and was called the San Carlos Hospital in honor of King Charles III, King of Spain. (The Isle of Orleans was ceded to Spain in 1763.) The new structure had 24 beds but sadly was lost to fire in 1809. Three patients died in the blaze and a fourth died soon after from “fatigue of removal”. After the San Carlos was destroyed, patients were housed in the upper gallery of the Cabildo (then serving as City Hall) for 1 month; following this they were moved to the Jourdan residence in the Faubourg-Marigny for 6 months until Mrs. Jourdan reclaimed her home; finally patients were moved to the dilapidated De La Vergne plantation for 5 years while awaiting the building of a new hospital. Conditions were deplorable. Twelve patients were forced to sleep on the damp floor of the hall because the wooden floors in the rest of the plantation were decayed.

In 1815, five years after the terrible fire that destroyed the third Charity, the fourth building was erected. The site was on Canal Street where the Fairmont Hotel is now located. This site in 1815 was in a remote, swampy area of the city. In only 3 years the conditions were once again so deplorable that a group of visiting citizens reported to the governor that Charity “served no purpose than to confine the wretched and compel them to die in a place contrary to their choice”. The complaints were that the hospital stood on a site no better than a swamp. Patients were found almost abandoned. The hospital was so dirty and with a lack of blankets, sheets and laundry facilities that it was a “deep disgrace to any civilized or Christian country”. Chickens roosted in the hospital rooms and their offal covered the furniture. When the floors were swept, which wasn’t often, the brick dust used to absorb the filth rose in clouds and choked the patients. Patients slept on mattresses on which “were the visible marks of the putrid discharges of those who had died on them of the most pestilential diseases”.

Hospital finances were a major problem during these years and the March 27, 1823 gambling act raised much needed appropriations for Charity. Thankfully things improved and by 1826 the reports were that although Charity Hospital was not a beautiful building, it possessed a moral beauty of the highest order. Charity was noted as one of the most efficient and useful charities in the country given that New Orleans was exposed to greater varieties of human misery, vice, disease and want than virtually any other American town. Plans were started in 1829 for a new building bounded by Girod, Gravier, St. Mary and Common streets. Between 1830 and the early 1840’s, hospital authorities added to Charity’s income by selling slaves and hospital property!

The fifth building was built in 1832. The next 100 years of Charity were a colorful time and included dueling doctors, the safe arrival of Sisters of Charity after their ship had been chased by pirates for seven hours, and the Huey P. Long Era. In 1834, the Daughters of Charity assumed control of the hospital. Charity enjoyed a time of skillful nursing care. The Daughters of Charity opened their own hospital Hotel Dieu in 1859.

Two renowned dueling doctors were Dr. John Foster and Dr. Samuel Choppin. As the story goes, Dr. Choppin was called to attend one of his students, a severely wounded medical student who had been shot by a law student in a fracas at a Carnival ball. Dr. Foster, the house surgeon, had the right to treat the student. Dr. Choppin was determined to treat his student. After fueling the fire by ordering a nurse to discard Choppin’s prescription for the student, Foster encountered Choppin making rounds at the same time. The two began to shout and had a severe fist fight at the dying student’s bedside. Shortly after, the doctors dueled with shotguns in the hospital’s yard. Luckily both missed and the matter was ended.

During this 100 year reign, the fifth Charity was a pawn in Huey Long’s Louisiana Politics game. Members on the Board of Administrators who had not contributed to his campaign were relieved of their duties. Issues with Tulane Officials, is suspected to have caused the Long administration to found LSU Medical School. Long contended that honest but poor boys with good records can’t get into Tulane Medical School – “you gotta have a lot of money”. Another dispute with Loyola University seems to be the reason Huey Long planned to construct a pharmacy-dental school on Charity grounds. Huey Long had the contagious diseases building moved on steel spools to make way for this planned building. There was much fanfare about the move of the building. Cameras and the public turned out to watch. Four months later Long was assassinated; his plans died too. The contagious disease building sat for a year without electricity or plumbing and was quietly rolled back to its original location in the dark of night.

Throughout this political circus there were reports of extraordinary efforts at Charity Hospital. It was noted in an annual board report in the 1930’s that the venereal diseases clinics treated 88,000 patients per year. That number was later disputed and increased to 130,000 per year! The hospital was in desperate condition at this time. Overcrowding was epidemic with 2 patients per bed and sometimes a third underneath the bed. There were even reports of doctors having to step over patients sleeping on the floor. After Huey Long’s assassination, Sister Stanislaus of the Daughters of Charity helped obtain federal funds for a new hospital. The story goes that when President Roosevelt was scheduled to meet with the Sister, she kept him waiting while she treated a motorcycle policeman in the president’s escort who was rushed to the emergency room. He must have respected this because a few months after this brief meeting with Sister Stanislaus, the federal government earmarked $3.6 million to Charity as a gift.

The sixth and current hospital was built in 1939. At the time it was the second largest hospital in the United States with 2,680 beds. In 1942 the Charity Hospital Blood Bank was opened, one of the first in the country and the largest in the South. Many Charity doctors advanced medical knowledge through their research on specimens from hospital patients. George Burch made diagnostic advances in blood flow throughout the body and in the inflammation of the heart muscle; Maxwell Wintrobe made major advances in the diagnosis of sickle cell anemia; Edgar Hull and Richard Ashman made their celebrated discoveries correlating electrocardiographic findings in myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and heart muscle hypertrophy (thickening) with clinical and anatomic findings observed at autopsy of Charity patients; Rudolph Matas was the first to perform curative surgery for an aneurysm, first to perform an operation on a patient under spinal anesthesia and first to identify appendicitis as a condition that could be treated by surgery rather than by administration of opiates.

There are many more interesting stories about Charity Hospital. This institution has remained standing (sometimes barely) and caring for the population throughout the amazing history of Louisiana from epidemics, wars, hurricanes, pirates and politics. The remarkable dedication of Sisters, Doctors and Administrators of the institution in sometimes the most squalid of conditions is the reason Charity has endured. Charity Hospital made history in the Louisiana territory thanks to the French seaman and boat builder Jean Louis. The inscription around the seal of Louisiana in the hospital lobby is especially appropriate in honor of a seaman who gave so much to the state of Louisiana, Jean Louis: “In this harbor weary sea-worn ships drop anchor and new launched vessels start their outward trips.”

The history of Charity Hospital can be read in full in Dr. John Salvaggio’s book “New Orleans Charity Hospital” available at the John P. Ische library, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans.