Bellevue: Three Centuries Of Medicine And Mayhem At America's Most Storied Hospital

"For many New Yorkers, “Bellevue” is synonymous with “hospital,” and the institution has had an outsized effect on the evolution of modern medicine, treating presidents and paupers alike. Hospital history might not sound like the recipe for a gripping read, but David Oshinsky, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, knows that people like me love a morbid tale of pestilence and human failings, especially when it’s leavened with compassion and innovation. Though Bellevue started out an 18th-century poorhouse where people went to die, it became an incubator of advances that helped create modern medicine, including the germ theory of infection, ambulances, maternity wards and forensic pathology."