The Jewish hospital was established in the mid-19th century, and was the largest of the three in Vilna. The Jewish hospital is situated right opposite the Choral Synagogue.
Mishmeret Cholim building was erected next to the hospital at the end of the 19th century. The Jewish hospital in Vilnius is on Pylimo g. 38 or you can access from Ligoninės Street. From the courtyard side. It was an organization that provided medical help also had its own dental clinic. These two institutions continued to operate under polish rule.
The oldest health care institution, maintained by the Jewish community and mostly by charities, was the Jewish Hospital for the Poor, established in the Vilnius Jewish Quarter in the 19th century in 1891. Treatment here was provided at a very modest price or for free. The hospital also provided medicines for the poor. The donations were used to maintain medical staff and an orphanage and grandparents' shelter. The popular institution was soon called Der Hekdeš (the shelter of the poor). The hospital accepted patients from other denominations for treatment without giving preference to Jews.
At the end of the 19th century, as the flow of patients increased, the hospital had to be moved to a new building near the former defensive wall of the city.
The street next door was named Ligoninės Street after a while. Hekdeš soon became one of the best-equipped medical institutions in Vilnius. At the beginning of the 19th century, Hekdeš had two buildings. In one of them there was a house of prayer and a pharmacy, in the other there were departments - infectious, venereal, mental illness, ophthalmic, surgical, as well as gynaecological and obstetric.
Vilnius residents did not choose doctors according to their nationality or religion, but according to their knowledge and ability to help the patient. Jewish doctors with medical education in Königsberg, Amsterdam and Göttingen also worked in Vilnius.
1889 the Jewish hospital had 724 places for men and 786 for women. In addition to the chief physician, there were 3–5 full-time ordinaries, paramedics, nurses, pharmacists, and farm workers in Hekdeš. During the Nazi occupation, the Jewish Hospital entered the borders of the Vilnius ghetto.
Today, the former hospital building has been converted into a residential home. Throughout the former hospital building complex, there is currently not the slightest sign of remembrance of the shelter that operated here.