Good Samaritan Hospital (Cincinnati)

Good Samaritan Hospital
TriHealth
The Dixmyth Patient Care Tower expansion, which opened in Spring 2007
Geography
Location	Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Organization
Care system	Private
Hospital type	Community
Services
Beds	700
History
Founded	1852
Links
Website	www.trihealth.com/aus/loc/loc_gsh.aspx?id=100300
Lists	Hospitals in Ohio

Good Samaritan Hospital, the oldest and largest private teaching and specialty health care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, was opened in 1852 under the sponsorship of the Sisters of Charity. The hospital is member of TriHealth, a joint operating agreement between Catholic Health Initiatives and Bethesda, Inc. Cincinnati to manage Good Samaritan. The Hospital of the Good Samaritan, at Sixth and Lock streets, was originally the Cincinnati Marine Hospital, built at a cost of $300,000, from a generic pattern by American Architect, Robert Mills. Because there was already a place for merchant seamen (river men) to go, there were insufficient numbers of such men to warrant opening the hospital.

During the Civil War, it was the Military Hospital of Cincinnati, which operated first as a volunteer hospital, supported by community donations, until it was obvious that the war would last more than 90 days, thus it was taken over by the Army Medical Department. After the war, Butler and Worthington purchased the hospital from the government for about $70,000 and donated it to the Sisters of Charity. The original eye hospital was used for a time,and perhaps formed by Dr. Daniel Drake, who received a charter from the Ohio General Assembly for a medical school in 1819 and then in 1821, a charter for the City Infirmary called the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum of the State of Ohio. "Commercial" stood for commerce and this is where the sick and injured river and canal men were brought.

In 1852, recognizing the need for a hospital that would provide care to people who could not afford the medical treatment they needed, Archbishop John Purcell purchased a 21-bed former eye hospital and turned it over to the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. It was named St. John's Hotel for Invalids, and was the first private hospital in the city.

Three years after St. John’s opened, demand compelled the sisters to expand. Four members of the medical staff of St. John’s Hospital, as it had become known, paid the costs of relocating and renovating an old colonial mansion at the corner of Third and Plum streets to accommodate 70 beds.

The kindness of the sisters of St. John’s led directly to the expansion, relocation and renaming of the hospital as Good Samaritan Hospital. A destitute man suffering from typhoid fever passed a many-weeks-long recovery at St. John’s, and when he recovered, the sisters gave him a job. A local banker, Joseph C. Butler had referred the man to the hospital, and when he attempted to pay the man’s bills, the sisters dismissed the charges, explaining that their care was “for the love of God.” Impressed, Butler and his friend Louis Worthington, purchased a large hospital that was being sold by the U.S. Government at the close of the Civil War. The deed was presented to the sisters with two conditions: that no one be excluded from the hospital because of his color or religion, and that the hospital be renamed “The Hospital of the Good Samaritan,” in honor of the sisters’ kindness. The new 95-bed Good Samaritan Hospital opened at Sixth and Lock Streets, near downtown Cincinnati, in October 1866.