Improving Hospitals

The American College of Surgeons.

The 1910s marked a major period of reform in hospitals. In few countries was the growth of the modern hospital so rapid as it was in the United States. Many new hospitals were built in American cities throughout the nineteenth century, as the population rapidly increased, and anesthesias, antisepsis, and medical technology began to make the hospital a necessity. In the twentieth century every community, regardless of size, seemed to believe that it must have its own hospital. In 1912 Congress recognized the increasingly important work of hospital laboratories by a special act, authorizing them to "study and investigate the diseases of man." The American College of Surgeons (ACS), founded in 1913, provided the major impetus for improving the work done in American hospitals in the 1910s. Under the college's strict membership requirements, surgeons desiring membership had to submit one hundred case...

[The entire page is 996 words long]

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