Chimborazo Hospital

Chimborazo Hospital
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
Inset of an 1865 map showing Chimborazo Hospital. To the south (bottom) are the tracks of the Richmond and York Railroad
Location	Richmond, Virginia
Coordinates	37°25′45″N 77°22′25″W / 37.42917°N 77.37361°W / 37.42917; -77.37361Coordinates: 37°25′45″N 77°22′25″W / 37.42917°N 77.37361°W / 37.42917; -77.37361
Built	1862

Chimborazo Hospital was an American Civil War era facility built in Richmond, Virginia, to service the needs of the Confederate Army. It functioned between 1862 and 1865 in what is now Chimborazo Park, treating over 76,000 injured Confederate soldiers. It achieved a 10 percent mortality rate.

Dr. James Brown McCaw was the Chief Surgeon. He had received his medical degree from the university of New York, in 1844, and at the time of the Civil War he was professor at the Medical College of Virginia,^[1] now VCU Medical Center.

Today the site is owned by the National Park Service and is used as the visitor center for the Richmond National Battlefield Park.^[2] The “Chimborazo Medical Museum” is housed in a 20th-century building atop the site of the historic hospital and features exhibits about the hospital and other hospitals in Civil War Richmond, as well as the practice of medicine in the 1860s.

References

Bibliography

• Brock, R. A., and Alexander G. Lane. Confederate States of America Hospitals Collection. Collection and Papers of R.A. Brock. 1861. Letters and documents pertaining to personnel (letters of recommendation, agreements, returns), and patients (reports and lists, discharge papers, request for physical examinations, medical certificates) of various Confederate hospitals. The bulk of the collection pertains to Winder Hospital, although there are some items relating to Chimborazo Hospital, a hospital for Negroes "engaged on work on Richmond Defense," Refuge Hill Hospital, Robertson Hospital, and Williamsburg Seminary Hospital. Many letters are addressed to Dr. Alexander G. Lane, Surgeon-in-charge of the Winder hospital.
• Curnutt RC. 1975. "Hill of Mercy: Chimborazo Military Hospital, 1861-1865". The Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association. 68, no. 4: 113-9.
• Gildersleeve, John R. "History of Chimborazo General Hospital, Richmond, Va. and its medical officers during 1861-1865." Virginia Medical Monthly, vol. 88, no. 10, pages 573-620.
• Green, Carol C., "Chimborazo: The Confederacy's Largest Hospital." University of Tennessee Press, 2004. ISBN 1572333162. The book includes chapters on the organization of the Confederate Medical Dept and Chimborazo Hospital, the Surgeons, the Staff, the Patients, Supplies, Medical Treatment, the Closing, and an Evaluation of the hospital's significance.
• Habersham, S. E. Observations Upon the Statistics of Chimborazo Hospital, with Some Remarks Upon the Treatment of Various Diseases During the Recent Civil War. Nashville, Tenn: University Book and job Office, medical college, 1866.
• Habersham, S. E. Remarks Upon Compound Fractures of the Thigh, from Gun-Shots (Treated at Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, Va.). Nashville, Tenn: University Medical Press-W.H.F. Ligon, Printer, 1867. "[Reprinted] from the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery."
• Irby, Gloria R. Chimborazo and Lincoln Hospitals. 1967. OCLC Number: 9563956.
• Johns, Frank Stoddard, and Anne Page Johns. "Chimborazo Hospital and J.B. McCaw, Surgeon-in-Chief." 1954. Offprint from: The Virginia Magazine of history and biography, vol. 62, no. 2, April, 1954."
• Pember, Phoebe Yates. 1974. A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond. (editor B.I. Wiley). Mockingbird Books. ISBN 0345238656 - (Mrs. Yates, a chief matron of one of the hospital divisions at Chimborazo, wrote this memoir between 1865 and 1879.)
• Pember, Phoebe Yates. Phoebe Yates Pember Letters. 1861. The collection includes letters to relatives and friends from Pember, including seven letters written while she was a nurse at Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, Va., 1861-1865; and items of later years, mainly 1895-1900, containing comments on current political events, social and economic conditions, personal finances and living arrangements, her reading, religion, visitors, relatives, and daily life in Mendham, N.J., Savannah, Ga., and elsewhere. Many letters from the period 1895-1899 were written during European travels and describe accommodations, prices, health, acquaintances, and American expatriates in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (#2232-z).
• Richmond National Battlefield Park (Va.). Chimborazo. Richmond, Va: [s.n.], 1976.
• Shortt, Katherine Blevins. Chimborazo Hospital: "A House of Charnal Living Sufferers", or Forty Acres of Miraculous Healing. Capstone Seminar Paper—Emory & Henry College, 2006, 2006.
• Smith, S. "Map of Chimborazo General Hospital, C.S.A., as it appeared July 6, 1862." Virginia medical monthly, v. 88, no. 10 (Oct. 1961).

External links

• Chimborazo Hospital - National Park Service, history and museum information
• Chimborazo Hospital in Encyclopedia Virginia
• History of Chimborazo Hospital
• National Park Service History of Chimborazo