Bellevue

Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

By: David Oshinsky

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine.

Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe - or groundbreaking scientific advance - that did not touch Bellevue.

David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution. From its origins in 1738 as an almshouse and pesthouse, Bellevue today is a revered public hospital bringing first-class care to anyone in need. With its diverse, ailing, and unprotesting patient population, the hospital was a natural laboratory for the nation's first clinical research. It treated tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers, launched the first civilian ambulance corps and the first nursing school for women, pioneered medical photography and psychiatric treatment, and spurred New York City to establish the country's first official board of health.

As medical technology advanced, "voluntary" hospitals began to seek out patients willing to pay for their care. For charity cases it was left to Bellevue to fill the void. The latter decades of the 20th century brought rampant crime, drug addiction, and homelessness to the nation's struggling cities - problems that called a public hospital's very survival into question. It took the AIDS crisis to cement Bellevue's enduring place as New York's ultimate safety net, the iconic hospital of last resort.

Lively, pause-resisting, fascinating, Bellevue is essential American history.

©2016 David Oshinsky (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"No other hospital is as embedded in our culture as Bellevue. David Oshinsky's biography of this grand dame of America's public hospitals is a page-turner, a tale of immigrants and epidemics, politicians and physicians, natural disasters and acts of terrorism, all of which shaped Bellevue, just as they shaped a city and a nation. Public policy at its best and worst comes alive. Oshinsky has captured the spirit, the resilience that is Bellevue, a quality that rubs off on the legions who have trained there. A wonderful read!" (Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone)

" Bellevue is a tale of medicine's tragedies and triumphs in the cauldron of New York City. In vivid prose, David Oshinsky portrays caregivers who, through the centuries, selflessly served the neediest and the unwanted, as well as researchers who pushed the boundaries of clinical knowledge, all the while battling bureaucrats and social indifference. This is a story of America's most esteemed public hospital that will both enlighten and inspire." (Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think)

"David Oshinsky's Bellevue is American history at its very finest. It's impossible to understand our nation's public health advancements without reading this authoritative retelling of New York City's storied hospital. A masterpiece of scholarship." (Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast)

Highly recommended

If you're interested in the history of medicine in the US, listen to this book.

Wonderful history of Bellevue; not so great narration

This book is a great history of Bellevue, medicine and New York City. The writing is captivating and flawless, and the book is peppered with interesting anecdotes about the evolution of Bellevue and its staff. NYC's treatment of this hospital of last resort is also well covered. I bought the book in hardcover but also purchased the audible which was very disappointing. Weird hesitation in the reading. But the book is a fantastic history and highly recommended.

Grew on me!

This book really grew on me after awhile. In the first couple of sections, there are several "boring" details (i.e. Dr So and So wrote to Other Dr, Other Dr wrote back) - as a listener, I found my mind drifting.
However, the last section of the book is phenomenal and super informative.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in medical or American history.

What a wonderful book!

For lovers of history and those fascinated by medicine, this book is wonderful. The author brings the story from the 1700s to modern day with exquisite detail.

A fascinating insight into so many aspects of American history

This book is not just about a hospital but about the history of medicine and New York and the country itself. I feel like I learned so much and I am vastly smarter for having read this book

Thorough and gripping journey through history

Thoroughly enjoyable tale of this iconic hospital and the changing times that defined it. I learned so much more than I had hoped when I first picked this book about the city, the different eras and illnesses it has had to deal with as well as the men and women that established and ran the institution into the current era. This was masterfully put together and performed.

Well done!

What a great book! It really turned out to be a history of New York City through the lens of the hospital. What a great way to understand the evolution of the city and our society in America in general. Well written and narrated. Highly recommend!

tale of two cities

"...we the willing...lead by the unknowing...
...are doing the impossible...for the ungrateful...
...by the time we get done here...we will be qualified...
...to do everything with nothing..."
( bellevue-NYU house staff bathroom wall - 1978 )

? are you intrigued by the inner workings of healthcare
? does the medical history of new york city fascinate you
? are the needs and problems of the poor important to you

if so, david oshinsky has written a throughly terrific book for you
it's the history of indigent medical care in a city constantly re-inventing itself
bellevue has been bravely performing that daunting task for 300 years

trauma, infectious disease, mental illness and drug rehab. predominate
bellevue develops a reputation as a place to train and "...see everything..."
jewish medical students, pushed out by quotas elsewhere, are welcome there

new yorkers are justifiably proud of of bellevue's history and accomplishments
but, as you'd expect, there is a sad undercurrent to all this self congratulation
NYC indifference and parsimony make heroic medical devotion a daily necessity

in the mid 1970's, i finished college ( pre-med ) 90 minutes north of NYC
many of my classmates interviewed and then trained at bellevue-NYU
NYC's impending bankruptcy had left the hospital an insolvent chaotic mess

then a 33 yo pregnant bellevue physician was raped and beaten to death in her office
a manhattan jury later voted 10-2 to absolved bellevue of negligence in her murder
for many of my longtime NYC physician friends, that was the last straw

bill deblasio ran for NYC mayor, in 2013, claiming that there were "...two cities..."
finance, art, entertainment, restaurants and wall street were one city
indigent immigrants, mentally ill drug addicts and the working poor were another

oshinsky tells the brave story "...of the willing..." who seek to care for that 2nd city
NYC is NOT America's leading medical city - Boston, Baltimore, SF etc. out pace it
bellevue's devotion and sacrifice are necessary due to NYC apathy and underfunding

History, Society, Medicine

This is more than the story of Bellevue or of medicine. It uses Bellevue as a compelling "character" all its own, with a deep influence over medicine and societal change over the course of over 200 years.
It's well-researched, but it is not a dry read or performance. In fact, I found myself sneaking time away to read a chapter or two at a time. The hospital - and medicine itself - opened its doors to eccentric patients and physicians, cutting-edge and barbaric treatments, expensive construction and bureaucratic neglect.
If you're at all interested in New York City, history, medicine, or any combination, pick up this book!

Bellevue and Medical History

This book focuses on the history of Bellevue Hospital, but really covers a lot about the history of medicine, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is very interesting. However, I found it to be very long and bogged down a bit in some places with too much detail. Also, it bounces around some, making the chronology a bit hard to follow, but maybe that couldn't be helped.