The Pécs Hospital of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God was established in 1796, with 12 beds. Since the 1840s, the hospital had 24 beds, and over 400 patients were treated per year. 60 years after its establishment, the increasing number of patients attended free of charge put the hospital into a very difficult financial situation, but then a foundation created by a wealthy citizen, János Szentmiklóssy, gave considerable support to the hospital. It is a very interesting circumstance that Szentmiklóssy, who lived in Vienna, had received treatment and nursing in the hospital as a person in need, and this experience prompted him later, when he was already a well-to-do man, to give financial support to the hospital that had become insolvent. According to reliable historical sources, it was no chance that the positive impressions he gained in the hospital lasted long as the name “hospital” was at that time almost equivalent to the definition of “poorhouse”, while at the Pécs Hospital of the Hospitaller Brothers, both in-patients and out-patients were attended individually and separately, not only free of charge but subject to the then up-to-date standards of treatment and hygiene.

By the end of the 19th century, the hospital had 40 beds and offered even surgery in addition to the considerable out-patient care services performed by 3 physicians and a paid nursing staff. In 1924, when the Royal Hungarian Erzsébet University of Science was moved to Pécs, and the clinical departments of the University started dominating the provision of health care, the hospital of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God lost much of its significance. Later on, the hospital continued to operate under the direction of a “secular” chief medical officer in cooperation with the Department of Internal Medicine of the University until it became nationalized simply at the stroke of a pen. At that time, Internal Medicine and the Surgery Department II were put up in the hospital.

In 1990, thanks to the untiring efforts of Hilár P. Dömötör, a new possibility appeared for relaunching the Pécs Hospital of the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God, to which end the legal basis was created by the restitution of property in 1992, which was followed by a formal cooperation with the University for almost ten years subject to the condition that a part of the monastery could be used by the religious brothers.