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Ogden’s Forgotten City Hospital
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Speaking before the Ogden, Utah, city council in November 1889, Dr. H. J. Powers, the official city physician, presented a dramatic description of how he and another doctor had recently performed “a very delicate surgical operation upon a ward of the City which was of such importance that death would have soon resulted if he had not been treated promptly. This operation was made . . . under the most unfavorable of circumstances as there was no fire in his room and no one to leave with him.”1 The need for adequate, publicly available medical facilities—rather than the hotels and rooming houses often used—would only become greater, he said, for “accidents, sickness, and pauperism are increasing in proportion to our rapid population growth.” Powers’s hope was to persuade the council to create a new entity, Ogden City Hospital, and his hope was soon to be realized. Ogden City Hospital was Ogden’s first acute care hospital. Also known as Ogden General and Ogden Medical and Surgical Hospital, it was the second largest hospital in Utah Territory when built in 1892 and the only one sponsored by a local governmental entity. The hospital grew out of the ambition of the city’s business and political leaders to assert Ogden’s importance within the area’s growing railroad economy and a desire on the part of the city’s physicians for a facility in which to care for patients. The hospital is particularly significant because of Ogden City’s role in its founding and in its initial years of operation. It was built with public funds, bonded for by the city, and, during its first five years, operated as a part of the city’s budget This hospital is mostly forgotten today. Those who are aware of it mistakenly describe it as having closed almost immediately after opening, a victim of city retrenchments during the Panic of 1893.2 One writer dismisses it as not a real hospital, a designation he reserved for the coming of the Dee Memorial Hospital in 1911.3 In fact, Ogden City Hospital arose at a time of particular civic ambition, and, after some initial setbacks that did not include closing, it served the community as a valued resource until its replacement in 1911.
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