Annual Report of the Directors of the Mount Sinai Hospital.

Provides much detail concerning the patients cared for by the hospital, both their medical, as well as their overall personal status. Mount Sinai Hospital is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. Established in 1852 as ‘Jews Hospital’ it was founded to address the needs of New York’s rapidly growing Jewish community. At the time, New York City hospitals often discriminated against Jews - refusing them treatment as patients as well as blocking the hiring of Jewish medical staff. “Originally, a sectarian hospital, the Jews’ Hospital accepted those outside the faith only in cases of accident or emergency. However care of the wounded during the Civil War, the draft riots and the Orange Day parade riots, which made a shambles of New York City, prompted the idea of change to a non-sectarian admission policy… In 1866, to make it clear that it served the community without distinction of race or creed, by a special Act of Legislature, it changed its name from the Jews’ Hospital to the Mount Sinai Hospital.’’ See T. Levitan, Islands of Compassion: A History of the Jewish Hospitals of New York (1964) pp. 30-1.