Hi all!

This week, there will be a bit of a break in the blogging action while I work on researching a few more stories for the blog. Here's what is in store down the road.

​One of the things I’ve been looking at was how different museums are doing virtual tours of their exhibits during the closures from the virus. Everyone has a little bit of a different approach, from using Facebook live to Zoom and having a cohost to filming, processing, and posting. Some of the videos are just visitors wandering around and pointing out things they see and the title text on interpretive signs (in pre-closure days). I’ve been mulling over the idea of doing something like that for our Museum, as it brings the collections to our community, but also has the possibility of bringing collections  to the world. I’ve virtually toured the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office in Washington DC today and the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA near my home town, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the National Museum of Funeral History in Texas, and an art museum that had paintings of landscapes with modern additions like bridges and cars (I’m not a specialist in art, as you can tell). They all had different strengths and weaknesses, and everyone highlighted things differently. Some did a continual stream, others picked out specific items, it was all over the board.

As a museum professional and a person who likes visiting museums anyway, I want to encourage you: if you enjoy the content that any number of museums are offering right now, please send a few bucks their way or become a member! Some museums are extending memberships purchased now or prior to the epidemic to make up for lost time that the museum is closed. ​​

I wrote this post up a while back and thought I had posted it. Guess not! Well the timing couldn't be better. Let's talk about the history of Hospitals in Humboldt County. 

Someone could (and should) write a book on this topic, as hospitals in the county, and the medical field in general in Humboldt County, has a really colorful history. You've got household hospitals, traveling doctors, brotherly feuds, nuns, Unions and Union-busting employers, pandemics, early insurance (more interesting than it sounds), evolving medical practices, treatments, and more. Of course, like most aspects of our area's history, it was colored by the fact that we're a rural, hard to get to area.

Here's a taste of that history.

As Humboldt County’s population continued growing with the industrial boom of turn of the century United States, growing towns needed medical care for a variety of illnesses and unpredictable events that came their way, particularly injuries in the variety of industries here.

It may be surprising, when comparing the hospitals of yesteryear to the hospital of now, that there were, at one point in time, four hospitals operating in the Eureka-Arcata area in the first and second decades of the 20th century. The population of the county in 1900 was around 27,000 individuals, with the number rising to 37,000 by 1920. There were loggers, miners, families, industrialists, and Humboldt county was a bustling place to live. It was also a very dangerous place to live, partially due to it still being a frontier area and the lack of workplace safety regulations.

The trouble came to a boiling point while Charles was hosting a surgery with spectators and Curtis claimed that Charles was using the opportunity to brag about his work. Charles replied that Curtis should buy the hospital and he could run things his way- Charles would even come up with a purchase price for his brother. All this happened while there was a patient on the table anesthetized for surgery. I'm sure an anesthesiologist (if there was one) was sweating nearby.

A few weeks later, Charles approached Curtis with a purchase price for his share of the hospital, and Curtis claimed that his brother had settled on that number because he knew it was too high and Curtis would turn it down. Next thing you know, Curtis takes Charles down by grabbing him by the throat and throwing him to the ground and knocks Charles out, sending him to the hospital. Curtis then severs ties with his brother’s hospital.

​A few years later, in 1918, Curtis caught typhoid and his brother, Charles, took care of him in the hospital. Once Curtis had recovered, the two brothers then worked on patients who had caught the famous Spanish Flu, an epidemic that wreaked havoc on Eureka. Charles’ hospital stayed open during the outbreak, and only closed when both Charles and Curtis and the matron and assistant for the hospital signed up to join the US Army Medical Corps in November of 1918 and were sent to France

When the brothers returned after their service, they operated independent practices and did not reopen the Northern California Hospital, which ended up changing hands in 1920.

​Around the same time that Northern California Hospital had taken root, the Union Labor Hospital opened in 1906, which was the first pre-paid health plan in the United States. There was a movement around this time to unionize loggers and other timber workers by the IWW (International Workers of the World, whose members were oftentimes known as Wobblys). 9 unions came together to open the Union Labor Hospital, initially at 5th and B. The organization was socialist oriented, and part of their movement was to open a hospital for the benefit of workers, initially only open to the 9 unions that founded the hospital but later included all unions. It was a hospital with 50 beds and initially supplied its own hospitals until later decades when it was open to the community- any doctor could bring their patients to the hospital to care for them. Payment was done through a ticket system. An individual would purchase a $10 ticket (which is about $280 in today’s market) that would offer complete coverage for the holder against sickness and accidents at work. Initially, these were only available to men, but eventually women and children could also purchase tickets and be cared for at the hospital. Additionally, the hospital was a nursing school that educated three generations of nurses during its operational days with classes supplemented with in hospital work. Most of these nurses remained at the hospital, ensuring a steady staff of available nurses to join the Hospital with the graduation of each class. The patients they cared for were mostly those affected by workplace accidents and excessive drinking.

Anti-Union sentiment battered the hospital in its early days- and barely a year after the hospital opened, a huge Union labor strike at a local mill led to the deaths of many of the strikers- but it stayed open and continued to serve patients, even in years when Union support waivered. Following the 1907 strike, employers of union workers required fees of $1 per month, which was used to pay into a fund for injured workers and allowed the worker to be treated at hospitals pre-chosen by the company, of which the Union Labor Hospital was excluded. A legal battle ensued, and temporarily the Union Labor Hospital was able to get an injunction to stop companies from charging workers the $1 per month fee, but it was later overturned in 1910. There were many workers, however, who paid the $1 fee required by their employer while also paying the $10 per year ticket for service at Union Labor Hospital and were cared for there rather than at the company- directed hospitals.

In 1918, when Curtis and Charles Falk were fighting the Spanish Influenza alongside numerous doctors and nurses, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange were chipping in to the cause by opening their Nazareth Academy to house the sick. Even though the sisters did not have medical training, they visited the sick in their homes and did what they could to help.

Once the Influenza epidemic drew to a close along with the Northern California Hospital as the Falks took off for France, Mother Bernard persuaded the city of Eureka to reopen the Northern California hospital. It was purchased for $20,000, which was paid through trading property. The Sisters were sent to medical training in San Francisco and to the Mayo Clinic for their medical training and returned to a reopened Northern California Hospital, whose name had been changed to St. Josephs. The hospital was to also be a training hospital and this location served the community until the Sisters built a new hospital on Dolbeer in 1954.

In 2000, after a little under a century in operation, General Hospital was also purchased by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange.

Here's a handy-dandy-low-budget (i.e DIY by me) graphic showing the consolidation of hospitals and healthcare in Eureka/Arcata. Orange boxes note hospitals owned and operated by St. Josephs. You'll notice a hospital at the bottom of the graphic that I haven't mentioned... Stay posted for the story of the Trinity Hospital and Mad River Hospital.