Chimborazo Hospital, on the eastern edge of Richmond, was the largest military hospital in the world at the time of the Civil War. When the war first started, Confederate soldiers converged on Richmond for organization and drill. Several large regiments camped on Chimborazo Hill and constructed over 100 barracks. They soon abandoned these quarters and marched off to the front lines, leaving the buildings behind. The Surgeon General of the Confederate States commandeered the buildings and established Chimborazo Hospital.
Dr. James B. McCaw served as the hosptial's chief and forged the complex to suit his ideas about how a large military post hospital should function. In due course, he had Chimborazo operating like a small city. According to "History of Chimborazo Hospital," about 76,000 patients passed through the facility during its three and a half years. The percentage of deaths was a little over 9 per cent, about 7,000. (The men who died at Chimborazo were usually buried at Oakwood Cemetery, about a mile away.)
Chimborazo was not a field hospital, but a convalescent hospital. Most soldiers arriving there from the battlefield had been injured several days earlier, had received emergency treatment, and were then transported to Chimborazo by railroad or ambulance. Many men wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines were brought to Chimborazo Hospital.
Chimborazo operated from October, 1861 until April, 1865. When the war ended, so did the life of its wooden buildings. Some of the structures briefly served as a day school operated by the Freedmen's Bureau, but most of the buildings quickly disappeared. The local residents tore most of the hospital wards down and used the wood for construction or for firewood. The last structure disappeared in the early 1900's.
The site of Chimborazo Hospital has been used as a park since the 1870's. The park, under the auspices of the U.S. National Park Service, has established a Chimborazo Medical Museum. |
