Chimborazo Hospital Remembered

By late 1864 there were 154 hospitals in the Confederacy and 204 in the Union. Chimborazo Hospital outside Richmond Virginia had 8,000 beds and may have been the largest military hospital in the world.   Chimborazo was exceptional, as well, in appointing to one of its large units Phoebe Pember, known as an outstanding woman hospital administrator.   Confederate Surgeon Herbert M. Nash remembered:   "In Chimborazo Hospital between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of wounds were treated during its existence. In it there was never a case of gangrene and not a case of smallpox ever developed in its divisions. It had a system of force-pump baths accommodating 300 men at the same time. It also had hot sulphur baths for skin diseases, in which the camp-itch was successfully treated. Vaccination was constantly practiced in all hospitals. Out of the number of wounds treated at Chimborazo eight thousand died, during its existence--a moderate mortality."

Posted in: Civil War Hospitals