I'd always associated Bellevue with an insane asylum, but apparently I got that idea from movies and stand-up comedians. Today, only 1/3 of Bellevue patients receive psychiatric treatment, and those with severe cases are sent elsewhere.

Bellevue began as a mansion that was converted to an almshouse and more famously as the go-to hospital for yellow fever patients. Later it became the haven for any patient who couldn't afford medical care, and it still is.

Bellevue should also receive credit for many medical innovations, including the horse and buggy ambulance, forensic medicine and pathology.

They took the tough cases. New York City was the center of the AIDS epidemic, and Bellevue took most of them before there was any kind of treatment.They were ready for Ebola victims before they even got one; when they did, he was a doctor, and they saved his life. Bellevue was there when Sandy struck, and a retaining wall collapsed, flooding its basement, where gasoline was stored to fuel its back-up generators on the thirteenth floor. Nurses, orderlies and doctors hauled gasoline up the stairs to keep the generators operating until the hospital could be evacuated. All thirty-seven elevators were down. Once more doctors, nurses, police men, firemen and the national guard spent a day and a night removing 700 patients to safety. Nobody died.

So . . . where does the insane asylum myth come from? That would be from Nellie Bly who wrote a series on Bellevue for Joseph Pulitzer's WORLD. She later wrote a book about her experience, TEN DAYS IN A MAD HOUSE, most of which occurred on Blackwell's Island where the serious cases were sent. She did see some seedy looking characters at Bellevue, but that's because they almost never turn anyone away.

Bellevue has also gotten some bad press at times. A doctor was murdered there. She was killed by a man who'd been living in a janitor's closet for several days. Another man had been living in the basement for two weeks. Yes, Bellevue was a haven for the homeless at times. It was the only place they could go. But security was seriously stepped up after the murder.

Bellevue has also been the go-to place for medical students to get practical experience. For years they had a mutual relationship with Colgate, Columbia, and NYU medical schools. There was almost no disease they wouldn't be exposed to at Bellevue, and the hospital never went begging for applicants.

As the Sandy episode shows, these people are heroes, and the American public doesn't even know it. New York City government is also heroic. Through the years, they've spent millions keeping the hospital for the destitute open. Those governments include republican, democratic, even Tammany Hall, but they all agreed that Bellevue was a necessity, a shining beacon signifying that we have a responsibility to treat the less fortunate.