Chaim Sheba (1908-1971) and the Israeli health system.

Chaim Sheba was one of Israel's most influential medical figures. An internist by training, Sheba was among the founding fathers of the Israeli military medical system and took part in shaping its unique local model. Between 1950 and 1952, he was the Health Ministry's Director General, and soon after was appointed Head of Tel-Hashomer Hospital.

The hospital as a laboratory: Population studies at Tel-Hashomer hospital in Israel (1950s-1960s).

In this article we examine how a leading Israeli hospital gradually became a large biomedical research facility, resembling a huge laboratory. For Chaim Sheba (1908-1971), the founder and first director of Tel-Hashomer Hospital, the massive immigration to Israel in the 1950s was a unique opportunity for research of diverse human populations, especially Jews who had arrived to Israel from Asia and Africa. The paper focuses on the way research and medical practices were integrated and their boundaries blurred, and studies the conditions under which an entire hospital became a research field.