Chimborazo Hospital  "76,000 Patients"  1862 - 1865

Richmond, like Washington and Alexandria, accommodated a collection of hospitals during the Civil War. The capacity of the City Hospital was soon exceeded, and the Chimborazo Hospital was one of those constructed to receive the overflow. It was a sprawling institution perched on a high hill near the western boundary of the Confederate capital.

Chimborazo began receiving patients in early 1862, and was later expanded to make room for the increasing numbers of sick and wounded that poured into Richmond. It was divided into 150 wards, grouped into five divisions, each presided over by a surgeon-in-charge. Dr. James B. McCaw, the surgeon-in-chief, has been called "one of the greatest men of the South".

A total of 76,000 patients were treated at Chimborazo during the course of the war. It was said to be the largest military hospital in the world up to that time, surpassing Lincoln Hospital in Washington, DC, which treated 46,000; and Scutari Hospital in the Crimea, which treated from 30,000 to 40,000.

Phoebe Yates Pember, one of the first matrons, or head nurses, appointed at Chimborazo, wrote memoirs of her experiences there. Female nurses were not readily accepted; on Pember's arrival, one ward surgeon loudly whispered to a friend in a tone of ill-concealed disgust that "one of them had come."

With severe shortages in food, medicines, and medical supplies, Chimborazo had higher death rates than most Northern hospitals. In an attempt to alleviate suffering, patients were given daily rations of whiskey, but both patients and medical staff members often misused the substance, and these supplies, too, eventually ran short.

The hospital was evacuated after Richmond fell in the spring of 1865.

Fascinating Fact:  Pember recounts the case of a soldier with a crushed ankle who fell into the hands of a surgeon who set and bandaged the sound leg instead of the broken one. By the time the drunken doctor's mistake was discovered, complications had caused the patient's death.


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