Public H ealt/1, and Social Welfare Work
405
The original Mercy Hospital on Jarvis Plaza has been replaced by an ultra-modern hospital with a capacity of 150 beds-built at a cost of $3,000,000. The percentage of free patients averages over 35% of the total number of pay patients, an eloquent proof of the spirit of charity that animates the Sisters of Mercy in Laredo to this day. JI,/ ercy /-I ospital, Brownsville, r9r7. This hospital had its beginnings as Divine Providence Hospital, under the management of the Sisters of Mercy of Laredo, who gladly assumed the care of the sick and suffering in the new building formally opened on June r, 1917. To understand how this came about, it is necessary to go back to the founding of St. Joseph's Home for the Blind, better known as the old Charity Home in Brownsville. There is no better illustration of the old adage "great oaks from little acorns grow." Back in 1901, a kind hearted and devoted woman, Miss Nora Kelly, known and loved by everyone in Brownsville for her great charity, opened St. Joseph's Home for the Blind on March 27, located on Washington Street and designed to help not the blind alone but the old and the poor, the needy and unfortunate. Two years later, a distinguished English eye-specialist came to Brownsville in quest of health and offered his services to the blind in St. Joseph's. His successful treatment of the sightless, particularly the restoration of the sight to two patients, brought hundreds to seek relief. Truly through charity the blind were made to see. The poor who sought relief at St. Joseph's, now better known as the Charity Home, reached 70, all non-paying. The Home was maintained through irregular contributions, Miss Nora Kelly being the head of the charity enterprise. 61 Some relief was obtained in 1913 through the efforts of Mrs. John G. Fernandez, who successfully obtained aid from the City and County to enlarge the scope of the work. The Mexican Revolution of r910 brought many refugees who sought relief at the Charity Home, but it was the severe attack on Matomoros by Villa forces in 1915 that strained the facilities of the Home when 250 wounded men were brought across the Rio Grande to Brownsville for treatment. Mrs. Borden Harriman of Washington was in Brownsville at the time on one of her periodic missions of charity and, realizing the great need for a regular general hospital. she began a campaign to raise the 61The Author, then a boy in high school in Brownsville, collected the monthly con- tributions for the Charity Home free of char.~e for several years, calling personally on the list of donors.
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