Bethesda

The Pool of Bethesda is described in John 2-15 as a place in Jerusalem where sick people went to seek healing. It was felt that immersion in stirring water in this pool was helpful to the suffering.

In the late 1800s, there was an excavation in the Old City of Jerusalem, near the Church of St. Anne, discovered this pool and confirmed the details as described in the Gospel of John.

The city of Bethesda, Maryland, where the NIH is located to oversee billions of dollars in federal medical research grants, is named after this Pool of Bethesda (as was the Bethesda Meeting House, which was a local Presbyterian church constructed near now-Rockville Pike in 1820).