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Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: July 29, 2014
Caption: Healing Pool of Bethesda
Additional Description: It is written in the fifth Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, beginning with the second verse:

"Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had."

As the angel of the Lord stirred the Pool of Bethesda to give it strength and healing, so let those who labor here, fired with the zeal for new knowledge, keep stirring the pool of complacency with the present, to the end that they may bring ever more comfort and healing to their suffering fellow men, and to the greater glory of God.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the driving force behind the creation of the Naval Medical Center, was particularly interested in the small pond fed by natural springs and still exists in front of the tower today. The pond reminded him of the Biblical Pool of Bethesda, a place of healing. The pond was eventually made into small lake and christened Lake Eleanor in honor of Mrs. Roosevelt.Close-up of sign in the rotunda of Building 1 NNMC
Submitted: August 2, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p281006
File Size: 2.296 Megabytes

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