By james art 
In addition to height and high tales, Alexander de Soto was in some stories highly educated, qualified, compassionate physician and surgeon, and other charlatan, medical quantum, healer of faith and Quixotic Dreamer. In this excerpt from her book Skid Road: At the border of health and homelessness in an American cityProfessor of the University of Washington Josephine Edin wrote about De Soto’s efforts in the early 1900s to set up a floating hospital for the poor on the central coast of Seattle.
Care for “unhappy souls”
Born July 24, 1840, in the Canary Islands of Spanish Alexander de Soto and American Elizabeth Crane, Alexander de Soto claims to be a descendant of the sixteenth -century Spanish explorer in America, Hernando de Soto. He told people that as a young man in Spain he studied about the Jesuit priesthood, fell into the Catholic Church and completed his education at the University of Madrid.
In 1862, De Soto moved to New York, where he did not seem to be trying to practice medicine from either faith or conventional form. Instead, he became a professional gambler and morphine dependent. He lived in home accommodation and homeless houses. The de Soto was healed by its dependencies in 1890 through the movement of holiness in Bauri Street’s mission, one of the first similar missions in the country.
De Soto lived and worked on Bowry Street’s mission when he caught a gold fever. He led a proselyte expedition, walking from New York to Seattle, hoping to take a boat to the gold fields in Yukon. He plans to preach for the sins of greed and debauchery in Alaska. He called their group of gospel Argonauts. After arriving in Seattle, probably in early June 1898, De Soto sought local newspaper reporters to cover their missionary work. In an article on a half -page entitled “De Soto’s Descendant and its proposed Christian work” in Seattle Post-Intelligent On Sunday, July 31, 1898, Irving Safford describes De Soto as a “small blue shout” with a “Cultural Castile Accent”. De Soto had plans for a floating hospital, which he called at Christ Hospital, which he wanted to build in Seattle, transported to Dawson City and created there as a Mission Hospital. “Work, needs me, you know,” he quoted, with a Saford bracket that “he is a doctor” – as if it just happened to De Soto that he could become a doctor as well as a captain.
At that time, throughout America, many people could and became doctors, not through formal ones, then called “regular” medical school training, but through apprenticeship and simply present themselves as doctors. The regulation and licensing of medical doctors were in the best case rudimentary, even in older cities like New York. In Washington, which has just become a country in 1889, the licensing of doctors is just beginning.
De Soto decided to stay in this border city in Seattle. He moved to an abandoned barn in the area of Skid Road at the mouth of the Duhamish River. The young area where they lived Dr. De Soto and his homeless patients were called lava beds because of their numerous messs and salons. De Soto began medical practice of Robin Hood. He charges high fees for medical consultations on rich people in their homes and provides free medical help and food for the homeless and poor in Skid Road. Until February 1899, he moved to a rented basement into a building of a building in the heart of Skid Road. It has turned the basement into the mission of the end, probably called its location along the coastline, as well as the focus of the mission on healthcare and other services for people who have become a society.
After a rich woman in Seattle died under the care of De Soto, a group of doctors in Seattle accused him of being a healer of faith, a Christian scientist, not a regular doctor. They stated that he did not have documented medical education and that he did not apply for a medical license in the country. De Soto claims that these doctors choose him because he successfully took care of Seattle’s “unhappy souls” when they were not.
Water hospital
Dr. De Soto met with the rich philanthropists in Seattle and a Judge in Seattle, who supported his idea of opening a hospital mission on a boat on the coast of Seattle. They formed the Association of Beauthinders in Seattle, persuaded urban officials to hire a place for their City Doc Association, found and bought the famous former opium contrabanda with a side wheel with a side wheel IdahoAnd he continued to turn the boat into a hospital. De Soto probably knew about and had seen the boats of “clean air” and floating hospitals for babies and for patients with tuberculosis in New York. The Mission Hospital in Seattle opened in early April 1900.
The US census in June 1900 for Seattle District 1 at Skid Road Records Alexander de Soto, a doctor, as the head of the Wayside Mission Hospital, accompanied by 49 Lodgers. Of the nine women’s apartments, two are listed as nurses, including Chief Nurse Irene Byers. Small, servant, chef and hairdresser are listed as professions for other women. There are six sailors or sailors, bed bugs, carpenters, chefs, workers on the day, the captain of the steamer, the guardian of salons and a drug.
At the end of October 1900, an article in the newspaper Dr. De Soto was described by its “soft, feminine, gentle hands” (“D -de Soto and work”). The reporter adds that De Soto’s violators accuse him of having a “oriental imagination”, emphasizing his exotic “otherness” and perhaps the Moorish influence on the majority population of white Seattle. But the reporter counteracts this with the “systematic plan of the applied Christianity” of the doctor, who attracted many supporters of his mission to provide medical help to those in need, but “not bring Hobos.” It is described as “practical mystic” (“D -R de Soto and his work”).
Dr. de Soto received funding directly from the city of Seattle for patient care addicted to morphine, as well as care for patients with admiration. At that time, Seattle and King County had an agreement that the city would take care of “sick poor” if they had been in Washington for less than six months. In addition, the city has agreed to take care of all the emergencies, as the poor King County farm and the hospital south of Seattle in Georgetown is too far from the city and has not been equipped for emergency care.
Newspaper in the Seattle area, CommunityHe transferred an article by Malcolm McDonald on May 23, 1903, entitled “The Samaritan Spirit – the Pharisees of Seattle”. McDonald has announced that the city wants to develop the land and the dock, where the hospital is located for a Wedside mission. “This is the only hospital in the city, ready at any time to get the poor – completely the poor who in illness does not know relief except the death or help of a good Samaritan.” McDonald pointed to the high commercial value of the Earth along the Seattle’s coastline and asked, “Is any land too valuable to save human life? Is there no place in Seattle for an institution that has regret, not a profit for the motive of its existence? “(” The Samaritan … “).
In July 1904, De Soto was expelled from his work with the mission of the city and by the members of the friendly association, as his management became unsatisfactory. The specific concerns are unclear. What, social reformers. Under their guidance, the renamed Emergency Hospital continued to work as much as before aboard Idaho Along the coast of Seattle.
De Soto continued to work in Seattle as a doctor. In the 1930s, at 93, he married Irene Byers, the mother of his two children and a former nurse at the Wedside Mission Hospital. Three years later, he died of injuries suffered from falling in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1907, the Idaho It became too pass to repair and the hospital for emergency cases was moved to the building of Sarah B. Jesler. The Wade Emergency Hospital continued to operate until 1909, when Seattle opened his own clinic and hospital in the center of Jasler in the public safety building. On the last day of March 1909, 29 patients were relocated from Wade Hospital at the Seattle City Hospital.
Dr. Alexander de Soto and his hospital for floating mission in Seattle are much more than a whimsical side notes in medical history and the heritage of care for homeless people in Seattle. The Gospel Argonaut, the practical mystic, through his medical mission work, forced the Seattle citizens not only to stand not only with the reality of an increasingly large number of sick people among them, but also to find innovative solutions for their care.
Sources:
Irving Safford, “De Soto’s Descendant and his proposed Christian work”, “ Seattle Post-IntelligentJuly 31, 1898 (Seattlepi.com); “Dr. De Soto and his work, ” There.October 28, 1900; The “clondicker’s souls” Evening JournalNovember 9, 1897; Nancy Rocafaler and James W. Havland, “Wide Cleaning: Chronological Summary of the First 100 Years of Medicine and Dentistry in Washington State, 1889-1989”, in Saddlegags to Scanners: The first 100 years of medicine in the State Washingtoned. Nancy Rocafalar and James W. Havland (Seattle: Foundation for Medical Association of the State of Washington, Foundation for Education and Research, 1989), 1-26; King County Commissioners, Washington, Home, progress and achievements in King County Medical Work., Washington (Seattle: Post Peter, 1930); Katarin Major, the “unhappy patient of the nursing Seattle”, ” American Journal of Nursing 6, No. 1 (1905), 32-34; “Dr. De Soto, 96, died after falling into the bay, ” Brooklyn Daily EagleNovember 12, 1936; King County Commissioners, Washington, Home, progress and achievementsS
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