St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem: A Modern Specialist Eye-Care Institution

St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem began in 1882 as a modern charitable institution devoted to treating eye disease. It first operated near Mount Zion, moved to temporary premises in the Old City after the 1949 armistice, and opened at its present site in Sheikh Jarrah in 1960. Its story is both the history of a specialist medical service and of an organization adapting its locations and methods to changing conditions in Jerusalem and the surrounding region.

The hospital’s name recalls the medieval Hospitallers, who had maintained a hospital in Jerusalem’s Muristan district. The institution founded in 1882, however, was a new nineteenth-century undertaking, not a continuation of the medieval hospital’s medical practice.

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A modern order and a Jerusalem hospital

The Venerable Order of St John was re-established in Britain in the early nineteenth century. Its members sought to renew charitable work in the Holy Land, drawing on the Order’s association with the medieval Hospitallers. Sir Edmund Lechmere and his wife, among the modern Order’s founders, had travelled to Jerusalem and seen the need for eye care. The hospital was intended to serve people of different religious communities, rather than operate as a missionary institution.

Efforts to obtain land began before the hospital opened. In 1876, the British ambassador in Constantinople made an unsuccessful request on the Order’s behalf. In 1881, the Prince of Wales appealed to the Ottoman ambassador in London. Sultan Abdul Hamid II issued a firman, or official decree, on 24 April 1882 approving the request. The Order’s council then decided to establish an eye hospital and clinic in Jerusalem, with Ottoman permission providing the basis for its opening.

From a rented clinic to a permanent hospital

The physician Jess Waddell arrived in Jerusalem in December 1882 and began work in rented premises while the Order sought a permanent site. The clinic drew patients from the city, nearby villages and towns farther afield. During its first six months, Waddell reported seeing 6,318 patients and treating 1,952. Trachoma was a major concern. Repeated bacterial infection can scar the inside of an eyelid, drawing the lashes against the cornea, the transparent front of the eye, and damaging vision. Crowding and limited access to water and sanitation increased the burden of this disease.

The service was open to people of different faiths, and the Order’s members did not preach to patients. Demand quickly strained the clinic’s capacity. The Jerusalem writer David Yellin described patients arriving during the night to secure a place among the limited number admitted each day. People from rural areas might wait outside with their children for hours before being seen. His account gives a sense of how access depended not only on having a specialist service nearby, but also on patients’ ability to travel and endure long waits.

A permanent hospital was established in a building on the Bethlehem Road, south of the Old City. John H. Ogilivie took over from Waddell in January 1884. William Edmund Cant became the hospital’s director in 1888 and served for 23 years. Under his leadership, the premises were expanded with an outpatient department, a doctor’s residence and additional water storage. An 1889 report recorded 58,000 people seeking help, 10,000 receiving treatment and 863 operations. These figures show how the hospital combined high-volume consultations with surgical care, although demand exceeded what a small institution could easily accommodate.

War, expansion and preventive care

The hospital closed during the First World War, and the Ottoman Turkish army used its buildings to store ammunition. The premises were damaged during the Battle of Jerusalem in 1917. After repairs, the hospital reopened in February 1919 under the British Mandate. Colonel John Strathearn became its director and remained in the post until 1941.

Strathearn reported that the existing premises could not adequately serve both inpatients and the many people seeking outpatient care. The hospital expanded onto leased land across Hebron Road, with a new wing designed by architect Clifford Holliday. The wing was built between 1922 and 1930, providing additional space on the opposite side of the road from the original hospital.

Demand continued to vary with local conditions. The hospital’s report for 1927 recorded 85,564 patients and linked a sharp rise in eye complaints to complications of conjunctivitis during years of drought. Strathearn also argued that limited knowledge of hygiene in rural Arab Muslim communities contributed to eye disease. The Mandate health department adopted an educational response: village schools were to teach basic hygiene, sanitation and initial care for eye problems. The first school connected with the hospital opened in Strathearn House in the Old City.

Displacement and the move to Sheikh Jarrah

The hospital’s original location became difficult to use after the 1948 war and the 1949 armistice between Israel and Jordan. The building stood near a new front line, while the valley below Mount Zion was designated a no-man’s-land. Access from Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, where many patients lived, was cut off. The hospital therefore resumed work in the Old City, using Watson House and Strathearn House in the Muristan. A clinic and a 19-bed ward operated there; a nearby house by Damascus Gate, donated for hospital use, provided a further 15 beds and space for operations.

These Old City premises served as an interim base until a new hospital opened in 1960 on Nashashibi Street in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. The change of address reflected a practical need: a hospital could not serve its patients effectively from a building isolated by the new armistice line. The former premises on the Bethlehem and Hebron roads later acquired different uses. The original building was preserved and incorporated into the Mount Zion Hotel, which opened in the 1980s, while the former Holliday wing became the Jerusalem House of Quality.

Specialist care and services beyond Jerusalem

At the Sheikh Jarrah hospital, eye care developed beyond the original clinic’s broad focus on eye disease. The Jerusalem facility combines outpatient services with specialist care for the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye, the cornea and children’s eye conditions. Its staff include local and international doctors, surgeons, nurses and paramedics. Overseas medical volunteers assist with patient care and contribute to teaching and training local doctors, while a research unit supports the hospital’s work.

The hospital group extended care beyond Jerusalem through additional facilities and mobile teams. It established a hospital in Gaza in 1992, a hospital in Hebron in 2005 and a clinic in Anabta in 2007. The Hebron hospital provides cataract surgery and laser treatment for diabetic retinopathy. Mobile outreach in the West Bank began in 1980, with teams travelling to communities outside the main hospital locations; outreach in Gaza began in 2017. Fixed clinics and mobile teams extended care beyond Jerusalem. War has repeatedly disrupted access and damaged facilities: inMay2025 the group restored outpatient services at its damaged Gaza City hospital, alongside relief efforts for displaced communities.

The hospital and the Venerable Order

St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group is a charitable foundation and a wholly owned corporate subsidiary of the Venerable Order of St John. The Order’s history and identity helped shape the hospital’s foundation and charitable purpose, while the medical institution developed through modern specialist care, professional staffing and training. Its relationship to the medieval Hospitallers is therefore one of institutional inspiration and name, not an uninterrupted continuation of medieval hospital practice.