Duke University Medical Center

Duke University Hospital is a 957-acute care bed academic tertiary care facility located in Durham, North Carolina. Established in 1930, it is the flagship teaching hospital for the Duke University Health System, a network of physicians and hospitals serving Durham County and Wake County, North Carolina, and surrounding areas, as well as one of three Level I referral centers for the Research Triangle of North Carolina (the other two are UNC Hospitals in nearby Chapel Hill and WakeMed Raleigh in Raleigh).

History

1924–1935: early years

The institution traces its roots back to 1924, six years before the opening of the hospital, when James Buchanan Duke established the Duke Endowment to transform Duke University (then known as Trinity College) into the research university it is today. In 1925, Duke bequeathed $4 million to establish the medical school, nursing school, and hospital. Two years later, in 1927, construction began on the original hospital (now known as Duke South), which opened on July 21, 1930, with 400 beds. In 1931, the hospital and medical school were officially dedicated on April 20 and the Private Diagnostic Clinic (Duke's in-house physician system) was organized on September 16. In 1935, less than five years after the hospital opened, the American Medical Association ranked Duke among the top 20 of medical schools in the country.

1936–1969: a number of firsts

In 1936, a team of physicians led by Dr. Julian Deryl Hart introduced ultraviolet light to kill germs in the operating room as a way to combat post-operative staph infections, greatly reducing the number of infections and related deaths. In the same year, the hospital established the nation's first brain tumor program, launching what would become one of the world's most renowned programs in the field of cancer treatment. In 1937, Joseph Beard developed a vaccine against equine encephalomyelitis