Every week we publish a historic photo highlighting a story from Naperville’s past from the history archives of Naper Settlement.
Before it became Edward Hospital 68 years ago, the medical facility on Washington Street was known as Edward Sanatorium, a place where people with tuberculosis — then a major disease in this country — were sent for treatment.
In 1900, one in every 500 deaths in Chicago was the result of the infectious bacterial illness. Sanatoriums provided the only treatment available — a restful environment and healthy climate.
Eudora Hull Gaylord Spalding founded Edward Sanatorium in 1907 as a memorial to her husband, Edward Gaylord, who died of TB. It was one of the first treatment centers in the Great Lakes region and had plenty of patients in the early 20th century.
By the 1950s, however, antibiotics were introduced as an effective treatment and the number of cases in the United States dropped significantly. With the sanatorium no longer needed, it was donated to the city of Naperville with the intent that it be used as a community hospital.
Edward Hospital officially opened as a 45-bed acute-care facility on Oct. 1, 1955. According to records, the first patient was Frederich Maurer Jr., who had been kicked by a horse.
Within two years, the hospital was accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation and Certification and within another two, it had become a public, tax-supported entity when voters approved a referendum creating the Edward Hospital District.
The district remained in place until 2000, when all of its assets were transferred to Edward Hospital.
As demand for its services quickly grew — the occupancy rate was 82% in 1960 — an expanion was undertaken in 1962 that allowed Edward to provide 110 all-electric beds, a nurse call communication system and piped-in oxygen.
It grew again in 1967, when a $620,000 addition to the main building added even more beds.
One major achievement occurred one year later, when Edward took advantage of a new Illinois Department of Public Health service and used a helicopter to transport a premature baby to St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria for treatment. Edward was one of just 11 hospitals outside of Cook County certified for the service.
Until Nov. 1, 1970, the emergency room operated on an “on call” basis. That changed when a new law required hospitals to have physicians “available within a reasonable length of time” — later deemed to be 20 minutes by the Illinois Hospital Association — after the patient’s arrival.
In order to meet the mandate, Edward started offering 24-hour emergency care. It proved a wise move. By the early 1970s, the ER occupancy rate exceed 90%, in part because so many newcomers to the area did not have a family physician and used the emergency room for their health care needs.
The last connection to the sanatorium became history in 1973. When a new hospital building to the south was finished, the only remaining part of the old sanitarium was torn down.
Andrea Field is the curator of history at Naper Settlement. For more information, go to www.NaperSettlement.org. Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.