Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital is a major state-owned hospital situated in Chennai, India. The hospital is funded and managed by the state government of Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1664 by the British East India Company, it is the first modern hospital in India. In the 19th century, the Madras Medical College joined it. As of 2018, the hospital receives an average of 12,000 outpatients every day. History The Government General Hospital was started by 16 November 1664 as a small hospital to treat the sick soldiers of the British East India Company. Sir Edward Winter who was the agent of the company was instrumental in the establishment of the first British Hospital at Madras. In its early days, the hospital was housed at the Fort St. George and in the next 25 years, it grew into a formal medical facility. Governor Sir Elihu Yale (the initial benefactor of the world-renowned Yale University) was instrumental in the development of the hospital and gave it new premises within the Fort in 1690. The Hospital moved out of the Fort after the Anglo-French War and it took 20 years before it could settle in the present permanent place in 1772. By 1771, the new location for the hospital, which until then was located on Armenian Street, was finalized—the land on which the East India Company's Garden House stood in the 1680s on the lower slopes of Nari Medu (literally "Hog's Hill") (the area around present-day Chennai Central). New building at this site was constructed by John Sullivan at a cost of 42,000 pagodas and the hospital at the present-day site was formally opened on 5 October 1772. Between 1664 and 1772, the hospital had been moved nine times. By the year 1772, the hospital was training Europeans, Eurasians and natives in Western methods of diagnosis and treatment and methods of preparing medicines. These trained personnel were posted to various dispensaries in the district headquarters of the then Madras Presidency to assist the qualified doctors. Subsequently, the hospital was turned into Garrison Hospital in 1814. By 1820, the institution had the recognition as the model hospital of the East India Company. In 1827, D. Mortimar was appointed as the superintendent of the hospital. The Madras Medical College started off as a private medical hall run by Mortimar, and was regularised into a medical school in 1835, which was opened by the governor, Sir