User:Kaitlynshilling/Chicago Hospital for Women and Children

With the rapid inflow of patients and Thompson's desire to expand women's roles in the medical field, the hospital underwent some changes. The first facility was small, with fourteen beds, a dispensary, and a pharmacy. During the first five years the hospital treated about two hundred patients and more than five hundred patients visited the dispensary. By July 1869 the facility was not large enough for the amount of incoming patients, so the hospital moved to new quarters with sixteen beds and a larger dispensary. By August 1965, the facility had grown to house 112 beds. Thompson and a fellow doctor, William H. Byford, founded Woman's Hospital Medical College and classes began in 1870. The faculty consisted of nine physicians.

After Thompson's death in 1895, the hospital was renamed the Mary Thompson Hospital for Women and Children. It continued to provide otherwise unavailable clinical opportunities for medical women until 1972, when men were integrated into the staff. In 1892, the faculty sought and secured an alliance with Northwestern University, believing that the relationship would enhance their school's respectability, ensure its longevity, and secure funding to improve teaching and laboratory facilities. Northwestern University refused to invest money in the women's medical school. As resources diminished and other medical schools in Chicago and in the nation began accepting women, the school's ability to meet students' educational needs was threatened and enrollment declined. In 1902, the Northwestern University Woman's Medical School was closed. The demise of the Woman's Hospital Medical College resulted from its success in educating women as physicians and proving that women could become physicians. The Woman's Hospital Medical College convinced other medical schools to remove obstacles to the medical education of women. The hospital soon was under financial constraints, due to the inability of patients to pay their bills. 80 percent of the patients were on some form of Medicare or Medicaid. Mary Thompson's administrators did not foresee these financial problems in 1972 when they spent $3.7 million on additions to the building, that brought the hospital up to its current capacity. In 1977 the hospital underwent extensive renovations, financed by a $3.3 million federal grant and a $3 million bank loan guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration. In April 1988, officials stated the hospital was closed. The reasons were never completely clear, but the most likely reason was because of the financial problems caused by a lack of patients and inadequate government aid.

The hospital was home to several profound medical establishments. In 1930, Chicago's first Mother's Milk Bureau was established. In 1943, the first Cancer Detection Clinic in the Midwest was established. In 1946, the first Mental Hygiene Clinic for Working Women was established and in 1951, the first Cardiac Kitchen in the Midwest was established.

Before its closure, the hospital was home to a bronze statue of a young boy, known as Donny Boy. Donny Boy stood over a fountain at the front entrance to the hospital's lobby, greeting those walking in. It is believed that the sculptor of the statue had previously been an ill child named Donny, who was taken to the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children by his widowed mother and received care throughout the duration of his illness. Once he had recovered, Donny grew to adulthood, becoming an artist and father to a young girl and young boy. After the death of Mary Thompson in 1895, Donny sculpted and gifted the bronze statue as a memorial gift to the hospital.