This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/JRB.2ACE/1549.2 Message Board Post: St. Barnabas Hospital was incorporated as The Home for the Incurables on April 6, 1866, less than a year after the close of the Civil War. At the time, it was the world's second chronic disease hospital (the first had opened three years earlier in Carlshalton, England), America's first, and the inspiration for many to follow. The Hospital was founded by the Reverend Washington Rodman, rector of Grace Episcopal Church, in the West Farms area of what is now the Bronx. He called together a group of public-spirited citizens to explore how to provide a haven for so-called incurables who could not be cared for in existing hospitals. Reverend Rodman's goal was to bring hope and medical care to a group that had neither. Dr. P.C. Pease, the Home for Incurables' first physician, noted that, "...where the faintest hope exists, no efforts are spared nor are any new remedies left untried." It was here that nitrous oxide was first successfully used as an anesthetic in prolonged operations. The Home received its first patients in 1867 in a small, frame building that had been a temperance house. Thirty-three patients were admitted the first year. St. Barnabas Hospital Third Avenue and 183rd Street Bronx, New York 10457 (718) 960-9000