Established in 1877 in memory of Queen Stephanie, this was the first Portuguese hospital specifically dedicated to the healthcare of children, and it remains a national reference in pediatric specialties, both medical and surgical.

[2] The Queen's own premature death of diphtheria in 1859 did not allow her to see her project to completion: her widowed husband King Peter V ordered the construction of the new hospital in a plot of land originally belonging to the extensive grounds of Bemposta Palace.

[3] Bernardino António Gomes, the King's personal physician, wrote that "the Bemposta Hospital has the elegance not of lavishness, but of simplicity and harmony" and that "its magnificence is not that of luxury and sumptuosity, but that of hygiene".

[1] Queen Stephanie's Hospital is also notable for having been the place where Saint Jacinta Marto was hospitalised, and in due course died, in 1920 after having succumbed to the great influenza pandemic that swept through Europe following the end of the First World War.

On 10 February, the chief surgeon, Dr. Leonardo de Sousa Castro Freire, assisted by Dr. Elvas removed two ribs only under local anesthetic, since, because of the condition of her heart, she could not be fully anesthetised:[4] she suffered terrible pain, which she said would help to convert many sinners.