ABSTRACT
The main hospital in San Francisco was first built in 1857, the result of two intense city problems. First, as with many similar public administrations, the local government was out of compliance with a federal regulation from back in DC, to provide indigent care: medical attention for those who lived on the street, or nearly, and could not afford to seek private care on their own. And second, vastly more disturbing: given the massive influx of migrants to town, the relevant officials had previously determined that the relatively new San Francisco needed both a hospital and a jail; but they could not afford both. They chose the jail. More important to lock people up than to heal them.
