When the doors of the jail shut on the young man, the officers who arrested him thought he was just another young drunk. He wasn’t. He was sick. In fact, he was mortally ill. Within another day the young man died for lack of medical care and the Last Rites of the Catholic Church were administered to him by Father Francis O’Brien.
That was in the early 1880's when Kalamazoo was a bustling town of 17,000 people but didn't have a hospital of its own. Other Michigan cities had them but in Kalamazoo the sick were as likely to end up in jail as see a doctor. The incident with the young man who died moved Father O’Brien and he shared the story with his good friend and mentor Bishop Borgess in Detroit. Borgess was also moved and responded by donating $5,000 to establish Kalamazoo’s first hospital.
Michigan historian Larry Massie began writing about the history of what became Borgess Health about three years ago. The health system commissioned him to create Health Care Anew: The First 125 Years of Borgess Health. The book tells the story of how Kalamazoo’s first hospital was built, its growth pains, and the challenges it faced over the years. Borgess Medical Center at 1521 Gull Road in Kalamazoo also has other affiliated medical care facilities around southwest Michigan. Borgess today is a member of Ascension Health, the largest Catholic non-profit health system in the United States.
Massie says, “The $5,000 from Bishop Borgess went toward a down payment on an Italian Revival mansion located on the corner of Lovell and Portage Streets. The ceremonial cornerstone was placed at the new structure in June 1889. That first 20-bed hospital has now expanded to a hospital that serves ten counties throughout southwest Michigan.”
Once the building was ready for its first patients, nursing care was provided by 11 nuns of the Sisters of St. Joseph. “The sisters arrived by train in July 1889, wearing stiff and stifling black and white habits,” says Massie. They’d been warned that they might be swept away by Indians upon their arrival in the Michigan wilderness. But the sisters survived and set out to help their patients, even though none of them had any formal training in medical care.
“In Borgess’s first decade of operation, only 164 patients could afford to pay, so there were a large number of patients who received free or subsidized care,” says Massie. “For those who could pay, private rooms could be obtained for $7 to $25 a week, and that included all meals, nursing and staff fees charged by physicians.”
Massie's book includes many historical photos to illustrate the hospital’s story. He and his wife Priscilla immersed themselves in research to write the hospital’s history, which was published in March 2015. The book is available at the Seasons Gift Shop inside Borgess Hospital and online.
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