God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine

By Victoria Sweet

San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s Hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves-“anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times” and needed extended medical care-ended up here. So did Victoria Swee…