CITY TIMES COVER STORY : County’s Hospital Care for Sick Dates to 1850s

Los Angeles County began caring for the sick as early as 1850, when the county of 3,530 people established a hospital fund to pay doctors for the care of the indigent.

In her 1979 book “The History of the Los Angeles County Hospital,” Helen Eastman Martin chronicles the early buildings and wards for tuberculosis and leprosy, and the need for the 20-story General Hospital.

The first county hospital was established May 29, 1858, when county supervisors secured the home of Cristobal Aguilar, an alcalde under Mexican rule and mayor when California became part of the United States.

Run by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the adobe on North Spring Street or North Broadway (records are unclear) provided a “charity ward” and another for patients who could pay. It had four rooms with eight cots for patients and two for the sisters. Martin’s book cites records showing that in its first seven months, 52 county patients and 11 private patients were admitted; 10 died.

By 1860, the county hospital moved to a two-story brick building on Naud Street between North Main and San Fernando streets.

The county’s population continued to grow as railroads were completed and word of California’s climate spread. More and more “health seekers” from the East who were suffering from tuberculosis reached California with no money to pay for their care.

The evolution of 20th-Century county hospitals reflects the medical establishment’s own growth, from single wards and few surgeries to semiprivate rooms and medical specialization.

The hospital expanded from 1897 to 1919. Nurses cottages (including one for black nurses), a jail and insane ward, two medical buildings, a contagious-disease building, a morgue, administration building and a tuberculosis ward were built during this time. The brick structures replaced old, shaky wood buildings on Mission Road, which was nearly impassable in wet weather.

“By 1933, the hospital wards were bulging and most were very dingy. The hospital admissions had increased from 12,443 in 1920 to 38,144 (total patients) in 1932-1933, without a proportionate increase in beds. There were 1,283 beds in 1920 and 1,494 beds in 1932. The move to the new (General Hospital) was urgently needed,” Martin writes.

As General Hospital was nearing completion, the Long Beach earthquake struck March 10, 1933, damaging the State Street hospital buildings that were being replaced.

Ironically, this year’s Jan. 17 Northridge quake damaged 16 buildings at County-USC Medical Center. Among the buildings closed were the Pediatric Pavilion and the Psychiatric Hospital. The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to pay $400 million toward the new hospital’s construction instead of earmarking funds to replace the damaged buildings--which would then have been demolished for the project.