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First floor: living quarters. Second floor: hospital. Third floor: entertainment. Such was the layout of 101 Placer Ave., a house that still exists. When Dr. Silvies Fuller and his wife Nellie built it in 1912, it was the first private hospital in Idaho Falls. Even sandwiching the infirm between dinner and dancing was an improvement. The first doctors moved in and did house calls start- ing around 1900, before setting up a few cramped rooms down- town. Before that, it was neighbors, churches, native herbs, "Indian remedies," and eventually midwives and nurses. If you got an infec- tion in 1870, you had a choice: figure it out with those resources (minus the nurses) or strap in for a four-day horse-and-buggy ride to the doctor in Malad City. Nellie, then, must have felt proud to be at the center of such vital progress, even as it was awkward to shuffle party guests past the sick beds on the way upstairs. Dr. Harry and Anna Spencer bought the house/hospital from the Fullers in 1917, and Anna held lavish parties when the lilacs bloomed on the front lawn. Did that mask the stench? Health and entertainment came into conflict soon thereafter, when the Spencer Hospital became ground zero for responding to the Spanish Flu epidemic, and large gatherings were discouraged. The later history of Idaho Falls hospitals is less romantic, but more familiar to longtime locals. The General Hospital on K St. and Idaho Ave., and the Peoples' Hospital on E St. each opened at around the same time as Spencer, but closed in 1923 when the five-story LDS Hospital opened on the river. Dr. Spencer moved the hospital out of his house in 1921 and into a new building on South Boulevard and Cedar St., where it thrived amid the competi- tion. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration took it over in 1941, renamed it Sacred Heart, and moved in 1949 into a large, new building on South Boulevard across from Tautphaus Park. Community nonprofits took over both of the religious hospitals by the 1970s, and they merged, becoming Parkview and Riverview — two branches of the same organization. Combatting duplication of services, the organization opened Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC) in 1986 and demolished the two historic buildings soon thereafter. Mountain View Hospital, opening in 2002, and the adjacent Idaho Falls Community Hospital, opening later this year — have since joined the fray. EIRMC frequently receives national recognition. Its 344 physi- cians had more than 138,000 "patient encounters" last year. And it can trace its history — in part — to the middle floor of a house on Placer Ave. where the music played and the lilacs bloomed. IDAHOFALLSMAGAZINE.COM 71 IF's first enduring hospital began in strange circumstances BYJEFF CARR PHOTOS COURTESY MUSEUM OF IDAHO The Best Medicine is One Floor Up IF