What’s In a Name? Fitzsimons
from Practice Update, Fall 2006
By Ginny Steele, Archives and Historical Collections, The Children’s Hospital
Have you ever wondered how the Fitzsimons Medical Center got its name? You know it was the Army’s Fitzsimons Medical Center until 1998, but where did that name come from?
Tuberculosis was at epidemic levels in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There were few treatments. Recovery took a long time. Death was a frequent outcome. Doctors routinely prescribed fresh air and sunshine, rest, clean living conditions and lots of raw eggs and milk. Beginning in the 1870s, Colorado attracted thousands of TB sufferers with its high, dry climate.
The Fitzsimons story begins in 1917 when America entered World War I. Trench warfare conditions in France accelerated the rate of TB infection, especially for infantrymen. The Army operated a small TB hospital in New Mexico , but it was too remote to make expansion practical. Recognizing the need for a pulmonary facility, Denverites lobbied for a new military hospital. They purchased land east of Aurora to donate. When Surgeon General Gorgas sent his aide, Col. Bushnell, to visit, the business community put on a full-court press for the TB hospital.
“What an effect that view would have on our poor boys!” the colonel allegedly said at sight of the Rockies . Bushnell’s endorsement of Colorado was no doubt due to his own previously successful TB recovery here. A supporter of Bushnell’s endorsement was James Ra Arneill, MD, who was on Children’s staff at the time.
In July of 1920, it was time to give the hospital, designated a “temporary recuperation camp,” some semi-permanent status and a real name instead of a number.
Army General Hospital No. 21, then the military’s largest, was renamed in honor of Lt. William Thomas Fitzsimons, a 28-year-old medical officer from Burlington , Kansas , who died in a German bombardment on September 4, 1917 at Dannes Camiers, France. Lt. Fitzsimons was the first United States Army officer killed in WWI, and one of the first five American doctors sent overseas.
Ninety years later, his memory lives on.
