A review by angiew23
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David M. Oshinsky

4.0

Having watched New Amsterdam and read 12 Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital, I chose this book after deciding I wanted to know more. This book is a history of both the hospital and the city, state and country it is located in, from the 1700s to 2014. Moments in history including the civil war, presidential assassinations, the great influenza, Ebola, AIDS, hurricane Sandy, are peppered throughout, giving the reader an exorbitant amount of context and clear understanding of exactly how each event was tackled at the flagship public hospital. The thoughts/understandings of the day are carefully described, for example “miasma” vs germ theory, shock therapy vs deinstitutionalized mental health services, private vs public medical care etc, giving the reader the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of the medical staff who were living and working during each of these periods. My only criticism is that at times the book seemed to go off on a tangent, or gave more context than necessary for the events that took place prior to 1930, especially events from about 1820-1875, and very little context or anecdotal information for some of the major events of the last century. 9/11 and Sandy were crammed into one chapter, but I know the names, family backgrounds and education of almost every prominent doctor there in the 1800s (lol, might be a slight exaggeration but trying to prove a point). This book is very informative but at times a bit dry due to a little too much context, but definitely gives a thorough history of this very interesting hospital.