Деведесета годишњица од оснивања прве дечје болнице у Србији

Abstract

The first children’s hospital in Serbia, as an exclusive paediatric intitution, was founded in a deserted military barrack in Studenička Street, near the Military Hospital, in January 1919. The founder was Dr. Katherine MacPhail, a young Scottish lady doctor, who came to Serbia for the first time in January 1915, with the first “Scottish Women’s Hospital”. After that, she worked as a volunteer during the First World War in France and on the Thessalonica Front. In the spring of 1919, the hospital was given an open pavilion in Topčider, which worked only during the summer months till 1924. In November 1919, the hospital was moved to a new building in Knez Miloš Street, and then named The Anglo-Serbian Children’s Hospital. In February 1920, a new annex, called ’’Villa Bravačić’’, was opened in Dubrovnik, which was active till 1922. In this hospital, the first Training School for Serbian Nurses was opened in 1921, and in February of that year, the hospital moved into its new permanent house in Višegradska Street, where it had 70 beds, three wards with a modern operating theatre, outpatients’ department, X-ray outfit and a pharmacy. Because of much better working conditions, the Children’s Surgical Department of the General State Hospital headed by Dr. Dimitrije Jovčić, later a professor of the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, was accommodated in this hospital from 1923 to 1931. Apart from him, in this hospital, there used to work a number of young Serbian physicians and several of them later became professors of the Belgrade Faculty of Medicine. The hospital worked till 1934, when it was closed, the building was sold and from that money Dr. MacPhail built a new Anglo-Yugoslav Children’s Hospital for Tuberculosis of Bones and Joints in Sremska Kamenica.

Keywords: children’s hospitals; Serbia; history of medicine; Dr. Katherine MacPhail