TEMPLES OF hEALINg: ThE FOUNDINg ERA OF METhODIST hOSPITALS, 1880-1900

kenneth e. Rowe The quality of medical care improved rapidly after the Civil War with the passing of physician licensure laws (1873), the widespread use of anesthesia combined with antisepsis (1880s), the opening of a model medical school at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1893), the beginning of clinical and laboratory research (1890s), and the development and use of vaccines, antitoxins, and X-rays (1890s). Through the efforts of the American Medical Association and the Rockefeller Foundation the profession achieved greater homogeneity and coherence. Accompanying these developments, hundreds of hospitals were being built to serve as the infrastructure for scientific practice and healing power. America’s churches, including the Methodists, participated in these changes by assuming they could contribute to human well-being and progress by building and sponsoring hospitals, making scientific medicine more available to religious constituents and especially to the nation’s growing poor. 1