Bellevue Hospital Center - Timeline

Timeline

Bellevue was founded in 1736, at a time when New York City did not extend much farther north than Wall Street. It was established in what was then wilderness, almost 2 miles north of the settled region of Manhattan, in order to quarantine the sick. When the grid system of streets was established much later in 1811, the survey had to take Bellevue into account and the placement of First Avenue on the grid is entirely due to the location of Bellevue.

• 1799: First maternity ward in the United States
• 1808: First ligation of the femoral artery for an aneurysm
• 1811: New York City purchases Belle Vue farm and builds the New York Almshouse.
• 1818: First ligation of the innominate artery.
• 1819: New York University faculty began to conduct clinical instruction at Bellevue Hospital.
• 1849: Amphitheatre for clinical teaching and surgery opened.
• 1854: Bellevue physicians promote the "Bone Bill," which legalized dissection of cadavers for anatomical studies.
• 1856: Bellevue physicians popularize the use of the hypodermic syringe.
• 1861: The Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the first medical college in New York with connections to a hospital, is founded.
• 1862: Austin Flint murmur is named for Austin Flint, prominent Bellevue Hospital cardiologist.
• 1866: Bellevue physicians are instrumental in developing New York City's sanitary code, the first in the world.
• 1867: One of the nation's first outpatient departments connected to a hospital (the "Bureau of Medical and Surgical Relief for the Out of Door Poor") is established at Bellevue.
• 1868: Bellevue physician Stephen Smith becomes first commissioner of public health in New York City. Smith initiated a national campaign for health vaccinations.
• 1869: Bellevue establishes the second hospital-based, emergency ambulance service in the United States.
• 1873: The nation's first nursing school based on Florence Nightingale's principles opens at Bellevue.
• 1874: Bellevue inaugurates the nation's first children's clinic.
• 1876: Bellevue's emergency pavilion, the first in the nation, opens.
• 1879: A pavilion for the insane is erected within hospital grounds—an approach considered revolutionary at the time.
• 1883: Bellevue initiates a residency training program that is still the model for surgical training worldwide.
• 1884: The Carnegie Laboratory, the nation's first pathology and bacteriology laboratory, is founded at Bellevue.
• 1888: The first American nursing school for men is established.
• 1889: Bellevue physicians are first to report that tuberculosis is a preventable disease.
• 1892: Bellevue establishes a dedicated unit for alcoholics.
• 1894: First successful operation of the abdomen for a pistol shot wound.
• 1903: In the midst of a tuberculosis epidemic, the Bellevue Chest Service is founded.
• 1911: Bellevue opens the nation's first ambulatory cardiac clinic.
• 1917: First ward for metabolic disorders in the Western Hemisphere.
• 1918: New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner begins on the second floor.
• 1919: German spy and saboteur Fritz Joubert Duquesne escapes the hospital prison ward after having feigned paralysis for nearly two years.
• 1933: William Tillett discovers streptokinase, later used for the acute treatment of myocardial infarction.
• 1935: Public School 106, the first public school for the emotionally disturbed children located in a public hospital opened at Bellevue.
• 1938: Paul Zoll completes internship at Bellevue and later develops the first cardiac pacemaker.
• 1937: David Margolis begins work on WPA murals in entrance rotunda.
• 1939: Bellevue becomes the site of the world's first hospital catastrophe unit.
• 1940: The world's first cardiopulmonary laboratory is established at Bellevue by Andre Cournand and Dickinson Richards, who win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1956.
• 1941: David Margolis completes series of 9 murals, titled Materials of Relaxation.
• 1952: Nation's first heart failure clinic opens, staffed by Eugene Braunwald
• 1960: Nina Starr Braunwald performs the first mitral valve replacement. New York City's Office of the chief Medical Examiner moves out of the second floor and into its new building at 520 First Avenue, but still maintains close relations with Bellevue.
• 1962: Bellevue establishes the first intensive care unit in a municipal hospital.
• 1967: Bellevue physicians perform the first cadaver kidney transplant.
• 1970: Bellevue joins the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation as one of 11 acute care hospitals.
• 1971: The first active immunization of serum hepatitis B is developed by Bellevue physicians.
• 1981: Bellevue is certified as an official heart station for cardiac emergencies.
• 1982: Designated as a micro-surgical reimplantation center for the City of New York.
• 1983: Designated as a level one trauma center.
• 1988: Recognized by the City's Emergency Medical Services as a head and spinal cord injury center.
• 1990: Establishes an accredited residency training program in Emergency Medicine.
• 1996: Bellevue plays a key role in the development of the "Triple Drug Cocktail" or HAART, a breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS.
• 2001: Publication of the Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary magazine to arise from a medical center
• 2012: Evacuation of all 725 patients due to power failure and flooding in the basement generators in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy