OSHER 507 - Ogden's Forgotten Hospital

This three-session course will explore the story of Ogden City Hospital. This was the second largest hospital in the Utah Territory when it opened in 1892, and it was the only one sponsored by a municipal government and operated as a department within a city's budget. The course looks at the special circumstances that prevailed in 1890 that made this hospital possible, two earlier hospitals that informed its development, and the evolution of its business model in response to the Panic of 1893 and the growth of medical practice at the turn of the twentieth century. An unusually rich archive of historical materials exists for this hospital. We will explore those materials and use them to describe the relationship of the hospital with its community and to track it through to its closure in 1911. We will wonder about how it became so thoroughly forgotten.