A Little Infirmary on the Prairie: Santa Barbara’s First Medical Facility

In the latter half of the 19th century Santa Barbara became a mecca for people suffering from chronic respiratory illnesses. The publication of books, such as Charles Nordhoff’s California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence in 1873, played an important role in popularizing Santa Barbara as the ultimate destination for healing and natural palliation in the American imagination. The rumors of the region’s rejuvenating climate converged with technological advances of the time. The completion of Stearns Wharf in 1872 and the building of a railroad connection in 1877 opened Santa Barbara to settlement, tourism, and commerce on a much bigger scale. Lured by the promises of salubrious weather and inspired by the hearsay accounts of extraordinary recoveries from “consumption and the diseases of the throat and lungs,” thousands settled in the Santa Barbara area.

The city, however, was remarkably unprepared to provide medical care to a growing population of chronically ill people. It turned out that sunshine and fresh air alone could not cure serious illnesses; Santa Barbara needed proper medical facilities. The absence of hospitals in the city was particularly painful for the folks living in poverty. This sentiment was expressed emphatically on the pages of Santa Barbara Weekly Press in 1874. An op-ed titled “An Infirmary” stated, “We want some place to bestow our indigent sick; people who are here without money enough to pay the expense of living, or strength enough to work for it. People who are ‘broke’ in pocket and constitution, cannot of course be accommodated at the hotels and boarding houses, running over with paying customers.”

Recognizing the urgent need for a medical facility in Santa Barbara, the Daughters of Charity, who had operated a school and orphanage in the city since 1858, made a decision to open a small infirmary in 1877. The infirmary was located on West Carrillo Street, near the site of St. Vincent’s orphanage. The infirmary was a modest but earnest endeavor. It offered the city’s residents a place of compassionate care, attentive rehabilitation, and healing. Since its opening, the infirmary provided essential inpatient care to chronically ill people and the moderate terms of the infirmary’s treatment allowed the poor to access medical help.