USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 4
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
All of the hospitals founded before 1880 have added largely to their plants in the succeeding years. Many have been completely rebuilt, some on new sites. They have acquired ever-increasing financial resources to pay for the many and varied activities they have undertaken. Notably the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston City Hospital have been enlarged. For a long time the Massachusetts General Hospital had a rule that precluded any member of its staff from receiving any payment for the professional care of patients within its walls. There was a moderate number of rooms to which private patients might go, but the service from physician or surgeon was gratuitous. As time went on, it became increasingly evident that only in a well organized, highly perfected hospital could certain diseases receive adequate study and treatment, and the well-to-do should not be denied these advantages, nor did it seem fair that the physician or surgeon should receive no recompense for his services. As a result one of the large additions to the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Phillips House, a building with one hundred and nine beds devoted solely to the care of private patients by members of the staff and others voted this privilege, was opened in 1917. Here adequate charge is made by the medical men for their services. Further facilities for private patients have been provided by the opening in 1930 of the Baker Memorial Building for private patients of moderate circumstances. Eventually three hundred and thirty patients will be cared for in this building. Another large develop- ment at the Massachusetts General Hospital has been a commodious building for out-patients erected in 1903, necessitated by the ever-increasing number of patients of this type. In 1927 this building was organically combined with
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the building of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary so that the two out- patient departments might function together. Yet another addition has been a building used for adminstration purposes, for the library, and for the quarters of the resident staff.
The Boston City Hospital has increased since 1880 from three hundred and eighty-seven beds to one thousand nine hundred and fourteen beds, and practi- cally all of the institution has been rebuilt in this period. Alnost every building now is relatively new, and few, if any, municipal hospitals surpass that of Boston. A noteworthy development there has been the construction and organization of the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, a commodious building devoted to medical research, which was opened in 1921. Perhaps nothing is a better index of the part investigation plays in the modern hospital than that a hospital supported by an American city government should have added to its equipment such a building as the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory. Since 1927 the Boston Tuberculosis Hospital at Mattapan, with six hundred beds, has been an integral part of the Boston City Hospital under the control of its trustees.
In 1923 the Boston Lying-in Hospital moved into a new building on Long- wood avenue; to this in 1929 an addition was inade so that now it contains one hundred and twenty-seven beds, serving both charity and private patients. The Children's Hospital in 1914 was moved from its old site on Huntington avenue to Longwood avenue, where with subsequent additions it covers a large amount of ground and in closely unified affiliation with the Infants' Hospital now has beds for two hundred and thirty-seven infants and children up to twelve years of age. In a striking way this institution has become the pediatric center of New England and ranks very high among the leading institutions of its kind.
In the latter part of this period St. Elizabeth's Hospital moved to new, large and well-equipped buildings in the Brighton district, where patients may be cared for in very commodious and well-constructed quarters. Others among the older hospitals have had less extensive additions, while still others are planning for new buildings.
Since 1880 the following new hospitals have been established: Long Island Hospital in 1887, New England Baptist Hospital in 1893, New England Deacon- ess Hospital in 1896, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1902, Beth Israel Hospital in 1911, Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital in 1912, Robert B. Brigham Hospital in 1914, Palmer Memorial Hospital in 1920 and, in addition, a num- ber of others, chiefly smaller institutions largely devoted to the housing and care of private patients.
The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital on the corner of Huntington avenue and Francis street was opened for patients late in 1912 and by the latter part of 1913 all of its buildings were in active use. Peter Bent Brigham, coming to Boston as a poor young man from Bakersfield, Vermont, his place of birth, amassed a fortune of $1,300,000 and on his death in 1877 directed his executors after the termination of certain life interests in his estate and after a lapse of twenty-five years to select a group of trustees who should build a hospital for the sick poor of Suffolk County. At the expiration of this period his fortune had increased in value to $4,300,000. Litigation delayed construction, and in
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the interval the estate had increased still further to approximately $6,250,000, of which about $1,250,000 was utilized in constructing this hospital, fittingly bearing the name of the donor. . It contains two hundred and forty beds utilized for medical and surgical patients. It is eloscly affiliated with the adjacent Har- vard Medical School, where its trustees seck the nomination of its pathologist, physician-in-chief and surgeon-in-chief, each of whom holds a professorship in the Harvard Mcdieal School. In a surprisingly short time this institution has acquired a national and international reputation; already it has trained on its resident staff numerous men holding important professorships in the medical schools of the United States and in other ways becoming leaders in their pro- fession. Since its opening, Harvey Cushing has served as surgeon-in-chief, Henry A. Christian as physician-in-chief, while S. Burt Wolbaeh is pathologist in suceession to the first pathologist, W. T. Councilman, and Joseph B. Howland is superintendent in suceession to the first superintendent, H. B. Howard.
The Robert B. Brigham Hospital on Parker Hill was founded by Robert B. Brigham, a nephew of the founder of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. It is a hospital for the eare of those suffering from chronic disease and earcd for one hundred and seventy patients in 1929. Methods for the treatment of chronic discase are being developed in this hospital, and this is a most important work, receiving far too little attention at the present time. Much larger endow- ments than arc now available should be forthcoming for enlarging this hospital, and new endowments arc needed to build similar institutions, for in Boston, as in most cities of the United States, there is far too little provision for the study of chronie discase and for the earc of those chronically ill.
The Beth Israel Hospital began in 1916 as a small institution in the Roxbury district, but in 1928 there was opened for its use a splendid group of buildings on Brookline avenue, erected as a provision by the Jewish people for the care of their own race and any others that might seek to enter. It is Boston's newest hospital and represents the latest idcas in hospital construc- tion. It has one hundred and ninety beds and cost approximately $3,000,000 to erect. Like many other hospitals in Boston it is actively used in the instruc- tion of medical students, both Harvard and Tufts students working in its various departments.
The New England Deaconess Hospital, beginning in 1896 as a small insti- tution on Massachusetts avenue, in 1905 moved into a building on Pilgrim road, now housing one hundred and eighty-three patients. In 1922 a nurses' home was built, which was enlarged in 1927, and in 1927 the Palmer Memorial came into close affiliation with it in a nearby building which accommodates eighty-eight patients. Soon construction will begin on an additional building for forty patients. With an excellent staff this hospital has become widely known, especially because in it Elliott P. Joslin has developed a diabetic elinic and carried on investigations of this disease which have an international repu- tation, Joslin being conceded generally to be the man most eminent at the present time in the field of the treatment of diabetes.
The Long Island Hospital is a city institution on an island in Boston Har- bor where ehronic eases are cared for. Though an excellent institution, filling a great need in the community, it is handicapped in its location, inasmuch as
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the visiting staff and the patients' friends consume much time in getting to the institution. Particularly does this remoteness of situation work against the best possible service from members of the visiting staff. This hospital should be housed in enlarged quarters on the mainland, and this will probably be done at no distant date.
The Baptist Hospital, which from its organization has been doing fine work, has been rebuilt in the last decade on its site on Parker Hill and so has been enabled to enlarge its beneficent work.
The Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital is a small hospital, adjacent to the buildings of the Harvard Medical School, operated by Harvard Uni- versity as a research institution for the investigation of cancer and allied condi- tions, as well as for the care of a moderate number of patients with such diseases.
Space does not permit a description of the progressive improvements and enlargements of these and several other sınaller hospitals.
This period has seen a great development of medical and surgical specialism, with departments in the hospitals to care for the activities of these special branches and even special hospitals for such patients where previously no such sharp lines of demarcation existed. In all of this development Boston has had an active part. Now there seems needed a reintegrative movement to correct certain evils that have resulted from a too sharp differentiation of inedicine into subdepartments. It would be interesting to speculate on how this will be brought about, but it is wiser to leave this to the historian of an- other semicentennial period, for he will be in a position to describe just what has happened, and accomplished events only are appropriate in a historical sketch.
The roster of the professional staff of Boston hospitals in this fifty-year period contains many names widely known for their accomplishments, of which Boston may be justly proud.
Health work in Boston always has been of a very high order, but in the construction of the Health Units, made possible by the bequest to Boston of approximately $6,000,000 by George Robert White in 1922, "for creating works of public utility and beauty, for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of the ('ity of Boston," Boston has assumed a definite leadership. Seven such units have been constructed in different parts of the city. Each is a well arranged building into which are gathered all the official and voluntary health activities of the district. These are not places to treat the sick but centers for the instruc- tion of Boston's citizens in ways of keeping well. Charles F. Wilinsky, who directed the first unit constructed, which was opened in 1916 (before the estab- lishment of the White fund), had an active and important part in determining and perfecting their organization. These Health Units illustrate how a munic- ipality can aid in the problem of improving the hygienic conditions under which its citizens live. In time the result of these activities should show itself in prolongation of the average length of life and a decline in the death rate from certain diseases.
Though not a medical activity in the strictest sense of the word, what is being done in the Forsyth Dental Infirmary on the Fenway is similar in char-
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acter to the activities of the Health Units. Founded by John H. and Thomas A. Forsyth as a memorial to their brothers, James B. and George H. Forsyth, this lovely building is dedicated to the care of children's teeth to the end that, trained while young in good dental hygiene, in later life they may avoid many disturbances of health that are caused by bad teeth.
Adjacent to the Harvard Medical School Building is the building which houses the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Here Francis G. Benedict and his associates are conducting investigations on the fundamental principles of nutrition. Already much of very great importance has been published from this institution, and it has established itself as a leader in investigations of this type the world over.
In the latter part of the period under discussion great forward strides have been made in Boston in facilities for medical investigation. The Nutrition Laboratory just referred to and the Collis P. Huntington Hospital are institu- tions devoted solely to the investigation of problems of medical significance. Boston's larger hospitals are now all organized so that the investigation of medical problems is part of their acknowledged function. The medical schools, too, in their laboratories conduct a large volume of investigation. Each year from these various institutions very creditable papers are published in both the clinical and nonclinical fields of medicine.
Mention already has been made of the discovery by George R. Minot and his associates of an efficient method of treating pernicious anemia, which has converted this practically incurable disease into one extremely amenable to treatment. Also reference has been made to Walter B. Cannon's work, which has led to the utilization of the X-ray in the study of patients with gastro-intestinal disease, and to Harvey Cushing's stimulating contributions to neurological surgery, in addition to which his enlightening investigations on the function of the pituitary gland need to be mentioned.
In this period S. Burt Wolbach has published the discovery of the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and of typhus fever; Hans Zinsser has eluci- dated further the latter disease; Frank B. Mallory has greatly improved the technique for the histological study of pathological specimens, being a notable contributor in the field of histological technique; Walter B. Cannon has contributed greatly to our knowledge of the function of the sympathetic nervous system; Charles Sedgwick Minot was a significant investigator in the field of embryology; Lawrence J. Henderson has thrown much light on the physico- chemical changes involved in the function of hemoglobin and on the acid-base equilibrium of the body; W. T. Porter has thrown light on the circulation and particularly its vaso-motor control; Ernest E. Tyzzer has made important studies of the cause and management of a protozoal disease of turkeys of serious economic importance; Theobald Smith demonstrated the difference between the types of tubercle bacilli causing tuberculosis in man and cattle and published important papers on animal parasites; W. T. Councilman and his associates made an extensive study of the etiology and pathology of smallpox; J. Homer Wright demonstrated the mode of origin of blood platelets and the cause of tropical ulcer; R. H. Fitz described appendicitis. These are only a few of the significant investigators and their investigations. Space does not perinit
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the mention of many others who here in Boston have aided in the advance of medieal seienee, or even of more than a small part of the contributions of the investigators referred to above.
It is apparent from this review that Boston's medical history in the past fifty years is a very ereditable one. Boston's medieal men and her medieal institutions steadily have taken high rank. There has been a constant, progressive improvement from year to year. The municipal administration in Boston has ever been willing to expend money generously in the medieal eare of its eitizens and in providing well-organized health activities. Boston has a progressive Board of Health, ably presided over by Dr. F. X. Mahoney. With Boston's health organizations the Massachusetts Board of Health co-operates elosely, and this is one of the most active and highly developed health boards of our various states.
But Boston and Massachusetts have ever been places of eurious contrasts, and this is true in medieine. Notwithstanding so much of worthy accomplish- ment in medicine, it must be admitted that there is also mueh activity on the part of well-meaning but misguided citizens who seek to restriet medieal progress by laws preventing animal experimentation, which has been the source of such great improvements in medical practice, and that medical science has not always received proper support from the State Legislature. Until the winter of 1929-30 the legislators have steadily refused to pass an adequate law for compulsory vaccination; when they finally did pass a bill requiring the vaeeination of all school children and not, as at present, only of publie school children, the measure was vetoed by Governor Allen.
Legislation that would prevent the poorly trained from praetising medicine in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has always been difficult to obtain. Up to 1915 the law did not even require that the applicant for a lieense to praetise medieine on the citizens of Massachusetts should be a graduate of any medieal school, and up to the present time there is nothing in the law to specify the quality of medical school or the eharaeter of its instruetion. Massachusetts remains the only state in the United States with such low requirements as to the qualifieations of those who seek the right to practise medieine, the one state that now ean become the dumping ground for graduates of medieal schools unrecognized by any other state, unless the Board of Registration in Medicine prevents this by the type of examination it holds. Unfortunately these examinations do not withhold entirely fromn registration graduates of inedieal schools of low grade.
It is a blot upon the history of medicine in Massachusetts in this enlight- ened period that in 1916 the legislators of Massachusetts had to devote time to the consideration of bills granting a special privilege to practise to a Chinese totally untrained in modern medicine,- bills that were vigorously supported by members of the Legislature and other prominent citizens, ineluding numer- ous lawyers,- and that persistently from year to year the legislators have resisted attempts on the part of the members of the profession of medieine to secure laws to guard more strictly the quality of those who eare for the siek citizens of Massachusetts. Evidently, those who make laws for the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts are more influenced by persons who praetise
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cults in medicine or are quacks pure and simple than by that well-trained group of medical men who have shared in the splendid developments of medicine described in the previous pages, and who have brought help to many individual citizens when they were suffering the pain and disability of disease.
May he who writes the medical history of the next semicentennial period be able to report an attitude on the part of Massachusetts legislators towards medicine more in keeping with that evinced in other states, where such medical legislation as has been sought in vain in Massachusetts has been obtained and is now being enforced.
At the end of this semicentennial period medicine in Boston is recognized the country over as having attained to a very high level of accomplishment. The medical profession of Boston is well trained and efficient. Splendid hos- pitals, thoroughly equipped, intelligently administered, receiving the services of highly trained physicians, surgeons and specialists, are available for the care of the sick, whether they be rich or poor. Fine medical schools are satisfac- torily training doctors for coming generations. In hospitals and medical schools there are facilities for investigation, and many men and women are successfully striving there to throw new light on disease and to improve the present methods of diagnosis, treatment and prevention. New discoveries in the fields of biology, chemistry and physics are being quickly applied in the study of medical problems. In 1880 almost no investigation was going on; Boston depended largely on foreign lands for new methods and new ideas in medicine, and a large debt was owed to these lands for inspiration and instruc- tion. In 1930 Boston has become an acknowledged contributor to medical advance; from foreign shores medical men come to see Boston's medical insti- tutions and students from far and wide are enrolled in Boston's medical schools. Present conditions seem auspicious for a continued progressive advance here in the many fields of the science and art of medicine.
ENGINEERS AND ENGINEERING IN BOSTON
By CHARLES M. SPOFFORD
At the time of the publication of the last volume of Winsor's Memorial History, although engineers had been building railroads for years and notable developments of water supplies and of sewage disposal had taken place, par- ticularly in Boston, the important part which engineers were then playing and were to play in the next half-century was apparently not perceived, and in the general index covering the four volumes of this history neither the word "engineer" nor the word "engineering" appears.
A few engineers whose work had been completed before 1880 were men- tioned by name in the fourth volume, such as Simeon Borden, who in 1830 conducted a triangulation survey of the state, the first trigonometric survey in the United States, and whose name was perpetuated by the Massachusetts Legislature one hundred years later by naming a mountain in his honor; Loammi Baldwin, a leading engineer in his day but best known for his development of the Baldwin apple; and his son, Loammi, who was foremost in the engineering work pertaining to the Hoosac Tunnel and who has been called the Father of Civil Engineering in America.
No mention was made of other engineers who had died prior to 1880 after accomplishing important work in Boston and elsewhere. Among these, taking them in the order of their birth, may be mentioned James Hayward, who made the original survey for the Boston and Providence Railroad and had entire charge of the construction of the Boston and Maine Railroad, including the bridge at Haverhill; George Washington Whistler, father of James McNeill Whistler, the famous artist, who served as engineer to the Proprietors of Locks and Canals at Lowell and was for a time chief engineer of the Boston and Albany Railroad prior to going to Russia to take charge of the building of railroads and dockyards, for which service he was decorated by the Czar; Uriah Boyden, who invented a turbine water wheel and the hook gauge; James Kirkwood, the second president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who distinguished himself in the field of railroad and hydraulic engineering and made a report upon the pollution of rivers for the Massachusetts State Board of Health; James Laurie, who was consulting engineer on the Hoosac Tunnel and chief engineer of the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield Railroad and who assisted in founding the Boston Society of Civil Engineers and organized the American Society of Civil Engineers, of which he was the first president; Thomas Pratt, who was active in railroad work but is best known as the inventor of the Pratt truss, a form of steel truss which is still widely used.
The names of other well-known engineers who were active in their day in Boston engineering circles, some of whom had already attained national reputa- tions by 1880, but none of whom are now living, should be recorded in this volume. These include Charles Storrow, chief engineer of the Boston and
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Lowell Railroad, prominent in the development of water power in Lawrence and author of the first treatise in English on public water supplies; Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough, active in the construction of the early Boston waterworks, chief engineer of the Chicago Sewerage Commission and author of the first exhaus- tive study published in America upon sewerage; James B. Francis, chief engi- neer of locks and canals in Lowell, who attained great distinction in engineering circles for his notable hydraulic researches; Thomas Doane, chief engineer of the Hoosac Tunnel, president of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers for nine years and founder of Doane College in Nebraska; Edward Philbrick, expert in railway bridge design, strong advocate of technical education, and member of the corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Joseph P. Davis, chief engineer of the Cochituate Water Board, City Engineer of Boston and later chief engineer of the American Bell Telephone and its successor, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; Desmond FitzGerald, pioneer in the study of water supply problems and an art collector of distinction; Frederic P. Stearns, chief engineer of the Massachusetts State Board of Health in charge of investigations of the metropolitan water supply in the late 90's - the most notable series of waterworks structures in the United States at the time - and a member of the Board of Consulting Engineers upon the Panama Canal; Hiram Mills, who developed the Lawrence Experimental Station for investigation of the purification of water and sewage and whose services were largely responsible for the reduction of the death rate from typhoid fever; Alphonse Fteley, who served as a resident engineer on the Sudbury river aque- duct and with Frederic P. Stearns carried out a notable series of tests on the flow of the Sudbury river, and who later became chief engineer of the Croton aqueduct in New York; Clemens Herschel, distinguished for his achievement in hydraulic engincering and particularly for the development of the Venturi meter widely used in the measurement of flowing water; Henry M. Howe, one of the leading metallurgists in the world in his day and the recipient of many honors in this and foreign countries, including the award of the John Fritz medal for his notable scientific achievements in the metallography of iron and steel; Ira N. Hollis, professor of engineering at Harvard for many years and later president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute; George C. Whipple, member of the American Red Cross Mission to Russia in 1917, chief of the Department of. Sanitation, League of Red Cross Societies, in 1919-20, and author of numerous books and papers on sanitation and health problems; Leonard Metcalf, nationally known for his ability in the field of public water supplies.
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