Above, Bishop William Murphy poses for a photo with some of those who attended Good Samaritan Hospital's recent 50th anniversary celebration. Inset at right is historical photo of doctors and nursing staff in the operating room at Good Samaritan Hospital, which has served the public since 1959. Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center, West Islip, celebrated its 50th anniversary this week. It was founded by the Daughters of Wisdom, a French Catholic Religious Order.

Sister Marguerite White who worked there when it first opened its doors on May 18, 1959, remembers when lab work was a lot different. She recalled that in those days, to discover if a woman was pregnant they would inject frogs with a woman's urine, in a few days, if it laid eggs, the woman was pregnant. Theyhave come a long way.

What started as a 175-bed facility has grown into a 537-bed medical center known for outpatient and inpatient surgery, cancer care, pediatrics, sleep medicine and cardiac rehabilitation. They are the only hospital on the South Shore to have a PET/CT scanner - an imaging tool that can find tumors, and avoids cutting to diagnose patients, useful in cancer patients and cardiology, oncology and neurology. On May 21, the hospital community and friends celebrated with a Mass at the hospital chapel with the Catholic head of Nassau and Suffolk counties, Bishop William Murphy.