100 Years Of Caring For The Community

WATERBURY — “Saint Mary’s Hospital: One Hundred Years of Caring,” a new exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center on display through September 20, chronicles and celebrates a century of medical care to the residents of the greater Waterbury area, and includes a section on the hospital’s School of Nursing.

On March 2, 1909, Saint Mary’s Hospital admitted its first four patients by horse-drawn ambulance, fulfilling the vision of establishing a hospital within the industrial core of Waterbury. Since that time the hospital has played a vital role in providing medical care to residents.

The influenza outbreak of 1918, the Depression of the 1930s, the first polio patients in 1931, an industrial plant explosion, a hotel fire, a strike riot in 1920, a bus wreck in 1940, and the flood of 1955 were all events in which the hospital provided care to those injured or ill.

Visitors will marvel at the successes physicians of the period were able to achieve while viewing historic photographs, archives, and old medical equipment and tools, including a midcentury X-ray machine and an X-ray image taken on glass. Nursing protocols in manuals dating from the early 1900s and old nursing uniforms are also on view, and comparisons to modern medicine are amazing.

The exhibition also includes a section on the hospital’s School of Nursing.

The Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center is operated with support from the Connecticut Commission on Cultural & Tourism, and is a member of the Connecticut Art Trail, 15 world-class museums and historic sites (ArtTrail.org).

Located at 144 West Main Street, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday from noon to 5 pm. Convenient, free parking is located directly behind the museum on Park Place.

Call 203-753-0381, extension 10, or visit MattatuckMuseum.org for additional information.