Bellevue

A history of the iconic public hospital on New York City's East Side describes the changes in American medicine from 1730 to modern times as it traces the building's origins as an almshouse and pesthouse to its current status as a revered place of first-class care. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe--or…