St. Louis Children's Hospital history

Missouri Baptist Medical Center celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding in 1884.

Barnes died in 1892, two years after his wife.

A kindergarten was established in the hospital in 1894.

Jewish Hospital established a Training School for Nurses, with its first graduating class in 1905.

Training for nurses in the diseases of infants and children began in 1907 at the hospital.

By 1912, through investments, the endowment had increased to more than $2 million.

Barnes Hospital dealt with the deadly Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918.

In 1922, for the first time anywhere, insulin was used to successfully treat an infant with diabetes.

His innovations included in 1925 developing a method to image the gallbladder by x-ray, paving the way for successful gallbladder surgery.

When it opened in 1927, the new hospital was hailed for its elegant design and functional innovations, winning the Modern Hospital of the Year award from the American Hospital Association.

In 1929, Doctor Alexis F. Hartmann developed the first practical treatment, Lactate Ringers Solution, for infants suffering from severe diarrhea and dehydration.

In 1944, Jewish Hospital became one of the first in the country to use penicillin to treat patients.

In 1950, Jewish Hospital became the first in the city to have a radioisotope laboratory.

In 1955, the medical and surgical divisions at Jewish Hospital received association status at the Washington University School of Medicine.

After the acquisition of a heart-lung machine in 1958, the hospital became one of the most active institutions in the country in the field of pediatric open-heart surgery.

The hospital built a cyclotron in 1963 to enhance radiologic imaging and radiation treatments at the hospital.

Seventeen-story Queeny Tower, named for benefactor Edgar Monsanto Queeny, opened in 1965.

The first pediatric dialysis unit in the Midwest was set up at SLCH in 1974.

By 1979, Barnes had become the fourth largest private hospital in the country.

In 1980, the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanner was developed at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology and housed in the Barnes cardiac care unit, where it was used to determine the extent of patients' heart damage.

The hospital performed the first successful in vitro fertilization in Missouri in 1983, and opened St Louis' first Multiple Birth Center, offering medical support for women having more than one baby.

Since 1985, surgeons have performed nearly 250 liver transplants with excellent long-term survival and quality of life for most patients.

In 1987, the lung transplant team was created at Barnes Hospital.

The program’s first successful adult lung transplant was on July 17, 1988.

Doctor Ralph Clayman performed the nation's first laparoscopic nephrectomy -- removal of a kidney through minimally invasive technique -- in 1990.

In 1992, Barnes formalized its affiliation agreement with the Jewish Hospital of St Louis.

Doctor Susan E. Mackinnon performed the country's first nerve transplant on a 12-year-old Indiana boy in 1993.

In January 1996, Barnes and Jewish Hospitals merged to form Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

SLCH performed the first of three successful ABO-incompatible heart transplants in 2004 by transplanting organs to infants with an unmatched donor blood type.

BJC breaks ground on Progress West HealthCare Center, a new 72-bed hospital in southern St Charles County scheduled to be completed in 2007.

8 overall among 93 companies in the American Society of Training and Development’s 2009 BEST Awards (the second time the CLL has been honored by the ASTD).

In June 2010, Boone Hospital Center babies got a new home with the opening of the Labor and Delivery Unit at the Boone Family Birthplace.

SLCH was chosen as one of 12 pediatric transplant centers in the United States to participate in an IDE study with Berlin heart which led to FDA approval of the device in December 2011.

Alton Memorial Hospital celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2012.

Today, the program is one of the world’s largest, with surgeons completing more than 1,280 lung transplants as of July 2013.

BJC is featured in the “Leading Practices on Disability Inclusion” report, published in conjunction with the 2015 Corporate Disability Employment Summit in Washington, DC.

Steve Lipstein receives the 2017 Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership.

In 2018, St Louis Children's expanded with a state-of-the-art, 12-story medical tower.