Healthy living as a strength of the North.
While there has been the necessary advancement in understanding when it comes to smoking, Orchard's story shows well that there was early awareness that healthy living is more than "not being sick. This is where the North offers opportunities. There is space, tranquility and (relatively) clean air. There are hospitals, leading knowledge institutions and broad opportunities for sports and exercise. Anno 2022 Groningen emerged as the healthiest city in the Netherlands, followed in second place by Emmen. In lists of the healthiest provinces, Fryslân traditionally scores high.
Yet the line from the healthy Orchard to healthy lists is not as direct as it may seem. With socioeconomic deprivation and polluting industries, the North also struggles with factors that are actually bad for health, and still affect life expectancy. Moreover, curative care (rather than preventive care) has long remained dominant. Nevertheless, by working together and using vulnerabilities as drivers for change, the Northern Netherlands developed as a region for healthy living.
A teaching hospital
In order to build a bridge between academic theory and medical practice, Professor of Medicine Evert Jan Thomassen à Thuessink initiated the founding of an academic hospital at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1797, the Nosocomium Academicum opened its doors in the Green Orphanage. Not much later, after the threat of a typhoid epidemic, the city government of Groningen also opened a hospital. This so-called Poor's Hospital merged with the Nosocomium Academicum in 1852 to form the General Provincial City and Academic Hospital (APSAZ).
