Beards Trimmed; Broken Bones Set

When it comes to attractions in St. Augustine, it's difficult to find a visitor to the oldest city who hasn't walked along St. George Street, the nine-block, pedestrian-only thoroughfare that's famous for its shops and restaurants. But few visitors walk the street southward from the Plaza de la Constitucion. If they did, shortly after they pass the distinctive Villa Flora at 234 St. George Street they would see a small marker that shows the location of the first hospital in the United States - Nuestra Senora de la Soledad (Our Lady of Solitude).

Established in 1597, the hospital served the needs of the military forces and civilians of St. Augustine for many decades. Because of St. Augustine's remote location, the hospital often had no doctor. When it did, the doctor was usually a "barber-surgeon" in the Spanish navy or army or a doctor who had been captured or shipwrecked nearby. More often than not, the hospital staff consisted of elderly soldiers, convicts sentenced to the town and female black slaves.

Although the hospital has long since disappeared, just a block east of the site at 3 Aviles Street is the Spanish Military Hospital Museum that depicts the recovery room for a hospital that stood on that same spot in 1791. Surprisingly, records show the recovery rate for surgery patients here was about 70 percent at a time when the best the British could achieve was 30 percent. Why? Because the Spanish washed their hands and sterilized their instruments before performing surgery - they had learned that essential technique from the Moors two hundred years earlier!