December, 2020 - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

Today we are profiling the former Holy Ghost Hospital at 1575 Cambridge Street — later Youville Hospital, and now the Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care Cambridge, a multi-building campus, part of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network.

*Front of postcard reads “This is where I am staying, 10 min walk from Harvard.” CHC Postcard Collection.*

The Holy Ghost Hospital for Incurables was established around 1893-1894 by Cambridge’s Reverend Thomas Scully and the Sisters of Charity of Montreal (the “Grey Nuns”), an order founded by St. Marguerite d’Youville in 1737. The hospital was founded on St. Marguerite’s vision to care for patients “regardless of their race, religion, or ability to pay,” along with the Reverend Scully’s dream of a hospital that would serve those with chronic illness and disabilities.

*St. Marguerite d’Youville, diocesemontreal.org*

Scully chose the name Holy Ghost after the Sancto Spiritu Hospital in Rome, which he had visited as a student in that city. Scully deeded six acres of land for the new hospital at Cambridge Street and Hovey Avenue, previously the Hovey estate.

*From Cambridge Hopkins Atlas, 1886, Mapjunction.com.*

In 1894 the hospital welcomed their first patient to their first facility, a partially completed 24-bed “cottage” designed by W.H. and J.A. McGinty. In this first year, the Grey Nuns cared for 12 patients at a time. In 1895 construction began on a 75-bed, four-story brick and stone building to replace the cottage (the cottage was razed in 1949). Officially dedicated in 1898, the new building was U-shaped with a projecting center pavilion, and featured quoins, window surrounds, and trim in Indiana limestone. It also featured a chapel, which until the early 2000s held regular Mass for its patients.

A prospectus of 1896 in “The Catholic Church of New England” reads that the hospital site is:

“happily located on Cambridge Street, in the very heart of Cambridge, and contains about 6 acres of beautiful land, upon which are many handsome elm trees, which add greatly to the scenery…The main building will be of brick, with stone and terra cotta trimmings, and slated roof, and will be fireproof, and in every respect modern. In this building will be the reception rooms, dispensary, rooms for medical staff and chaplain, and other offices. The administration building, with its adjoining wards, will be built well back toward the rear of the lot…leaving the open space in front of the administration building for drives, walks, lawns, fountains, and flowers.”

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is MC_P016_12.jpg — *Holy Ghost Hospital, Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection, digitized by Digital Commonwealth. The image is estimated as taken between 1920-1924 but it could have been earlier.*

Multiple additions were made to the hospital campus over the years, including a carriage shed and stable in 1901 and 1903; nurses dormitory in 1905; balconies in 1911; hospital laundry and a five-story addition in 1924; a west wing in 1927, which would add 90 patient beds; and many additions and alterations between 1941 and 1997, including a new nurses dormitory and an east wing. These later additions would obscure the original building and today it is hard to imagine the original structures.

*Holy Ghost Hospital under construction, January 5, 1927.*

Nurses posing with an artistic fountain presented to the Holy Ghost Hospital for Incurables, Cambridge, by James J. Conley, a director in the Harvard Trust Company. June 25, 1929. Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection, digitized by Digital Commonwealth.

The hospital was active during major health emergencies in Cambridge, including the 1918-1919 Influenza epidemic.

*“How Cambridge is Fighting the Grippe,” Cambridge Chronicle, October 12, 1918.*

The CHC holds a small collection of photographs from the family of Claire Lawrence Levesque, a nurse’s aide at Holy Ghost Hospital during the 1920s and 1930s. Not much is known about Levesque’s time at the hospital, but her photos give a personal glimpse into life there in the 1920s (most of the photos are before the addition of the new wing in 1926-1927).

*Unidentified nurse or nurse’s aide, possibly Claire Levesque?, undated. Levesque Collection, CHC.*

*Three women, likely Sisters, standing in front of the base of a statue on the grounds of the Holy Ghost Hospital, undated. Photo verso reads “Sr. Delia Carrier.” Levesque Collection, CHC.*

*Eight unidentified nurses and patients, easternmost front entrance of Holy Ghost Hospital, undated. Levesque Collection, CHC.*

In 1947 the hospital opened a cancer research unit, and in 1952 they opened an inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation unit. In 1953 Dr. Charles Bonner joined the hospital staff as a cancer researcher with an interest in rehabilitation. Bonner, a former Boston University School of Medicine professor, was also one of the first African-American graduates of the school, and he would become a leader in the rehabilitation field.

In 1959 the Cardinal Cushing Rehabilitation Center opened at the hospital, and in 1970 the hospital joined the Covenant Health Systems and was re-dedicated as Youville Hospital & Rehabilitation Center, a 305-bed care facility for elders and those in need of rehabilitation.

*Aerial view showing the Holy Ghost campus, 1947. Patriquin Collection, CHC.*

In 2001 Youville Hospital joined with Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and in 2009 Spaulding purchased Youville, officially changing the hospital’s name to Spaulding Hospital Cambridge. Today, in addition to their site in Cambridge, Spaulding Hospital has sites in Brighton, Medford, Malden, Boston, and beyond. Their Cambridge location continues to serve as a certified long-term acute care hospital and an outpatient rehabilitation center. They are the home of innovative research programs of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, including the Cardiovascular Research Lab, Exercise for Persons with Disabilities (ExPD), the Spaulding National Running Center, and the INSPIRE Lab for Sensorimotor Rehabilitation & Engineering Technologies. The campus also includes Youville House at 1573 Cambridge St, an assisted living residence established in 1998.

*Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care Cambridge*

In December 2020, the City of Cambridge announced that they would be leasing space at Spaulding Hospital for the new Transition Wellness Center (TWC), a temporary (24 months) 58-bed emergency homeless shelter for adults who test negative for COVID-19. Residents from the shelter at the War Memorial Recreation Center would be transitioned to TWC. The City-funded TWC is located on the first and second floors of the east wing of Spaulding, which were previously vacant (the rest of this wing has been used largely for equipment storage rather than patient care for many years). In the beginning of the pandemic in March, Spaulding’s fourth floor of this building also served as a recovery center for COVID-19 patients.

*Spaulding’s East Wing, site of the TWC*

For more information on the evolution of the hospital over the years, including a historical pamphlet and photographs, please contact us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.

Sources:

CHC survey file, 1575 Cambridge Street

“Celebrating the Generations 1895-1995,” Youville Hospital & Rehabilitation Center pamphlet, CHC Library.

Boston’s Hidden Sacred Spaces: http://www.hiddensacredspaces.org/spaulding-rehabilitation-hospital-chapel-and-meditation-room-cambridge

Spaulding Hospital: https://spauldingrehab.org/locations/cambridge-continuing-medical-care

Nineteenth century cities were notably unhealthy places, rife with all sorts of infectious diseases. Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in Cambridge at the beginning of the 20^th century, but significant numbers died in periodic epidemics of diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, malaria, and measles – all nearly forgotten today. However, none of these caused greater fear than smallpox, a highly communicable virus that killed as many as 60% of those it infected and often left the survivors badly scarred.

[Sickbed with pox victim and text with decorated initials]. Frontispiece and text in: Een excellent tracktaet leerende hoemen alle ghebreken der pocken sal moghen ghensen / Paracelsus. Thantwerpen : Thantwerpen : Gheprint by J. Poelants, 1553.

Smallpox originated in Asia in the third century CE. European explorers carried it to the new world, where it caused the death of entire local populations – including an estimated 90% of the Native Americans in Massachusetts Bay in 1617-19. An outbreak in Boston in 1721 infected over 5,000 people, of whom 844 died, and epidemics recurred in 1730, 1751, and 1776-78. Cambridge’s Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse introduced Dr. Edward Jenner’s improved smallpox vaccine to America in 1800, but inoculation seemed counter-intuitive to most people and was never common. (During this period Waterhouse supplied Thomas Jefferson with enough to protect his family and two hundred slaves.)

Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846, “Letter from Benjamin Waterhouse to Edward Jenner,” OnView: Digital Collections & Exhibits, http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/6624. In this letter, Waterhouse describes for Jenner the difficulties he has encountered with inoculations of spurious matter and asks for some additional vaccine, specifying that the matter be sent on soaked threads pressed between glass and sealed with wax.

An outbreak of smallpox that struck Cambridge in 1872 and 1873 infected 290 people, of whom 57 died. The city offered free vaccinations and isolated infected persons at the almshouse, and eventually these measures prevailed. The next epidemic originated in Boston in 1901 and struck with much greater force. Cambridge’s first case was reported in October, and this time the city’s new Board of Health swung into action with an aggressive campaign of mandatory isolation of infected individuals, vaccination of everyone living in neighboring houses for the distance of a city block, and fumigation of the infected premises with formaldehyde gas. The city did not attempt to quarantine well persons because such measures were too difficult to enforce; at the mere rumor of a quarantine the inhabitants would scatter; if they were left in place their health could be monitored. Active patients were isolated as far as possible from populated areas in three houses on New Street that the city took by eminent domain expressly to serve as a temporary “detention hospital.”

View of “The New Almshouse” published in the Cambridge Chronicle, 22 March 1851

Free city-wide vaccination clinics were not sufficient, and in March 1902 the Board of Health ordered that all inhabitants of the densely settled neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city who had not been successfully immunized within the previous five years had to submit to vaccination. Teams of doctors went from house to house and vaccinated everyone they could find. Libraries, schools, and churches were closed in June. During the summer, doctors accompanied by police officers visited every house in the city, and anyone who could not produce evidence of vaccination or refused to be vaccinated was summoned to court.

By August 18^th, 1902, the incubation period for new cases had passed, and the epidemic was over. In all, Cambridge doctors vaccinated 56,213 persons over a ten-month period. Of the reported 192 people infected, 32 died. By comparison, Boston reported 1,596 cases; in both cities, the mortality rate was about 17%.

The city burned down the houses on New Street in 1906, and the epidemic passed into history as the last major smallpox outbreak in the United States. However, memory of the episode survives in the landmark case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ability of the City of Cambridge to require citizens to submit to vaccination.

Detail of New Street on 1903 and 1916 Cambridge Bromley Atlases.

The case was brought by Rev. Henning Jacobson, Assistant City Clerk Albert Pear, and two others who refused to be vaccinated. Rev. Jacobson, who was pastor of the Augustana Lutheran Church, refused for religious reasons, while Pear produced a note from his doctor exempting him on medical grounds. The Cambridge District Court judge was not swayed and fined each man $5.00. The Massachusetts Anti-Vaccination League took up their case; when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled against the men, the league supported their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, Justice John M. Harlan confirmed that: “Upon the principle of self-defense, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members” [Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)].

The authors of an article published in the February 17, 2005, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine state: Rejecting the contention that mandatory vaccination violated an individual’s right to due process and equal protection as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the Court held that states may limit individual liberty in the service of well-established public health interventions. For 100 years, this seminal opinion has served as the constitutional foundation for state actions limiting liberty in the name of public health. (Parmet et al., N.E. Journal of Medicine 352:7)I

Month: December 2020

A History of Holy Ghost Hospital (Spaulding Hospital)

Smallpox Inoculation – Cambridge Leads the Way