In 1883, the first Army and Navy General Hospital was built in Hot Springs National Park as one of the country’s oldest Army general hospital. The hospital was dedicated to serving the sick and wounded of the United States fighting forces.

Dr. A.S. Garnett, an illustrious medical figure in Hot Springs during the years before the turn of the century had nurtured the idea of founding a military hospital nearby where it could make use of the natural hot waters. After General John A. “Black Jack” Logan visited the baths for treatment, he returned to the Senate and persuaded Congress to authorize the building of an Army-Navy General Hospital at Hot Springs.

Once constructed, the first patient was admitted two days after the hospital opened. Throughout the late 1800s, the patient load increased to as many as thirty at a time, most of them victims of rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago, and dysentery. Horse-drawn ambulances regularly carried these military patients from the train station to the hospital daily.

When military hospitals began bursting at the seams with heavy loads of World War II sick and wounded, it was decided to expand the Hot Springs Army and Navy General Hospital.  Thus, the hospital expanded to the Eastman Hotel across the street.

By the late 1940s, over 95,000 patients passed through the Hot Springs Army and Navy Hospital. Medical facilities at the Army and Navy Hospital were divided broadly into separate medical, surgical, radiological, laboratory and dental service branches.

To cure cases of rheumatism, physicians prescribed exercises at the patient’s bedside, baths in the natural hot water, sunbathing sessions on the sundeck in the summer, shock therapy, whirlpool therapy, and therapeutic pool exercises.

Threatened with closure since 1954, the hospital’s future was determined in 1959 when legislation ordered that the property must be used as a vocational rehabilitation center or for other public health or educational purposes. Today, the Army and Navy Hospital remains the Hot Springs Rehabilitation Center.

Credits and Sources:

“Army and Navy General Hospital: Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.” Hot Springs National Park Library. (Accessed June 15, 2015).

Cockrell, Ron. “The Hot Springs of Arkansas—America’s First National Park: Administrative History of Hot Springs National Park.” National Park Service. Accessed June 15, 2015.

Quinn Evans Architects, Mundus Bishop Design, and Woolpert, Inc. Hot Springs National Park, Cultural Landscape Report and Environmental Assessment. National Park Service, 2010.