New Haven Hospital and Grace-New Haven Community Hospital Collection

New Haven Hospital, originally known as the State Hospital, was organized in 1826 by professors at the Medical Institution of Yale College and other interested citizens. It was the first general hospital in the state and among the earliest general hospitals in the nation. After funds were raised, a building was erected on Cedar Street and opened in 1833. Donors became members of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut. The hospital did not have a direct relationship to the Yale School of Medicine until 1914 when an agreement allowed the hospital to be used for medical instruction and provided for the professors of the medical school to become chairs of the departments of the hospital. As the institution was still largely a charity in the first decades of the twentieth century, only Yale staff had access to patients. So that other physicians could gain clinical experience and follow their patients into the hospital, two other hospitals were founded in New Haven, Grace Hospital in 1889 and the Hospital of Saint Raphael in 1907 (opened 1910). Grace Hospital was founded by homeopaths and eclectics, but had become a community hospital by the 1920s. A plan to merge Grace Hospital with New Haven Hospital was avoided by Grace Hospital's raising enough money to remain independent. In 1944, discussions resumed resulting in a merger under the name Grace-New Haven Community Hospital in mid-1945. This hospital was partly under the control of the Yale School of Medicine but also open to community physicians. Grace-New Haven Community Hospital became Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1965. The New Haven Dispensary, founded independently in 1872, became, by contract in 1879, the clinic for the Yale University School of Medicine. It eventually became the outpatient department of the hospital.