In the mid-19th century, the city of Lisbon was plagued with outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever. The young King Peter V and his wife Queen Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen paid frequent visits to the hospitalised patients; during one such visit to Saint Joseph's Hospital, the Queen was impressed by the fact that children were treated in the same infirmaries as adults: with the money that had come from her dowry, Queen Stephanie proposed first the creation of a children's infirmary and then of an entire hospital devoted to poor ailing children. The Queen's own premature death of diphtheria in 1859 did not allow her to see her project to completion: her widowed husband King Peter V ordered the construction of the new hospital in a plot of land originally belonging to the extensive grounds of Bemposta Palace. The kingpassed away childless one year later, and the Bemposta Hospital was unveiled by Stephanie's brother-in-law King Luís I, on 17 July 1877, the anniversary of the Queen's death, having previously ceded ownership of the hospital to the public. The construction of the hospital was carefully planned by a commission presided by the King, and comprising :pt:Bernardino António Gomes, filho|Bernardino António Gomes, Francisco António Barral, the Baron of Kessler, Dr. Simas, the Count of Ponte, and General :pt:Filipe Folque|Filipe Folque. After several contacts with foreign specialists in London, Berlin, and Paris, the chosen project was that of British architect Albert Jenkins Humbert, on the recommendation of Prince Albert. When it was built, Queen Stephanie's Hospital was considered a model children's hospital, encompassing all the modern improvements in hospital construction of the day. Florence Nightingale wrote, on her Notes on Hospitals that "if children's hospitals are to be built at all, this is the kind of plan that should be adopted", calling its wards the best in Europe. Bernardino António Gomes, the King's personal physician, wrote that "the Bemposta Hospital has the elegance not of lavishness, but of simplicity and harmony" and that "its magnificence is not that of luxury and sumptuosity, but that of hygiene".
Marian apparitions
Queen Stephanie's Hospital is also notable for having been the place where Saint Jacinta Marto was hospitalised, and in due course died, in 1920 after having succumbed to the great influenza pandemic that swept through Europe following the end of the First World War. By February 1920, Jacinta had developed purulent left pleurisy with fistulisation and osteitis of the 7th and 8th rib. On 10 February, the chief surgeon, Dr. Leonardo de Sousa Castro Freire, assisted by Dr. Elvas removed two ribs only under local anesthetic, since, because of the condition of her heart, she could not be fully anesthetised: she suffered terrible pain, which she said would help to convert many sinners. On 19 February, Jacinta asked the hospital chaplain who heard her confession to bring her Holy Communion and administer Extreme Unction because she was going to die "the next night". He told her that her condition was not that serious and that he would return the next day. The following day Jacinta was dead.
