One of the collections held by the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. MD Archives is the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing records (1896-1974). A gift to the collection is a scrapbook from alumna Evelyn I.V. Howard, class of 1908, who captured images of her fellow classmates and house staff physicians during her years in training there. Included among her friends were images of Nina Gage, who went on to join a missionary outreach in Changsha, Hunan Province in China in 1909. Gage worked in the hospital created by the team, and established a nursing school for both men and women. The scrapbook includes images of the hospital founded by the team as well as the nursing school students’ classes and hospital scenes sent to Howard by Gage. They illustrate an important time in the development of China’s medical history.
This is the cover of the Howard scrapbook, which is wrapped in the blue and white striped cloth of the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing student uniform. The Roosevelt family coat of arms and motto is pictured at the bottom right. The Roosevelt family coat of arms, as depicted here in blue and black, includes a rosebud bearing three roses with a crest consisting of a helmet and three ostrich plumes. The family motto in the ribbon below the crest reads “Qui plantavit curabit” which means “The one who planted it will take care of it” or “He who will plant will cultivate.”
NURSING IN CHINA
Nursing, as a profession, was almost unheard of in pre-20th century China. Traditional Chinese healers diagnosed patients by observing various parts of the body – the tongue, the pulse (taken in both arms), and asking extensive questions. They then prescribed herbal remedies, massage, acupuncture or other methods to balance yin and yang – the two great opposing and complimentary forces in nature – to bring the body back into balance. (Forgive the simplification; this is a very basic explanation of Chinese medicine.) The family themselves, or their servants, in wealthy households, treated the patient at home – hospitals were also introduced by western missionaries – following the prescribed treatment. It is significant to note that most of the care givers were men.
Bathing a hospital patient
Men’s medical ward decorated for Christmas. The man in black is a probationer (nursing student in training).
Feeding a helpless patient in Yali Hospital.
THE YALE-IN-CHINA MISSION
Starting in the 1880s, western missionaries brought modern medical methods to various large cities of China where they established missions’ projects. One team, organized by Yale University’s Christian Missions Society, was the Yale-in-China mission. The team consisted of members of the Yale class of 1898 and their families. Additionally, Nina Gage, a 1908 graduate of the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing, and sister to team-member Brownall Gage, joined them in 1909 to work as a nurse in the hospital/clinic and to help establish a modern nursing program.
One of the team members, working with experienced missionaries from a northern project, arrived in 1902 to visit possible cities to establish the work. He then reported back to the Yale Missions Society board and the project team about the cities he visited for their consideration. Eventually they chose the city of Changsha, Hunan Province in southern China to establish the Yale-in-China Mission. Selected for its large size, Changsha was considered extremely clean and well built, according to the more experienced missionaries. Changsha’s alleys were paved with granite and it had a good sewage system, compared to other cities. Other missionaries had high opinions of the people there, citing them as born leaders who were very independent and influential in Chinese culture and life.
Map of southern China, highlighting Hunan province and the city of Changsha (this image and the following two are courtesy of Nancy E. Chapman)
In 1904, the team rented two buildings near the center of the city that were large enough to support their plans to establish a prep school and college, a medical school and hospital/clinic, as well as a nurse training school. One building was large enough to carve out several classrooms and dormitory space for students and housing for the team, while the other building served as a hospital/clinic.
Left: The Yale Mission’s early medical work was led by Edward Hume, M.D., Yale class of 1897. Hume (right) is pictured with two Chinese colleagues at the door of the mission’s first clinic and hospital, housed in a converted inn in the crowded center of Changsha.
NINA D. GAGE
Nina Diadamia Gage was born in 1883 in Brooklyn, and she and her siblings grew up in and around New York City. She attended Wellesley College, where, like her older brother, she was an active member of the missionary committee. After graduating, Gage entered Roosevelt Hospital’s Training School for Nursing, which had opened in 1896. (Roosevelt Hospital was renamed Mount Sinai West in 2015.)
Nina Gage as a student nurse, relaxing on a building rooftop, at Roosevelt Hospital’s School of Nursing, circa 1907
At that time, student nurses were trained at the bedside by the senior student nurses, as graduate professional nurses were few in those years. The junior nurses, who served as floor staff, were taught to take vitals, change bandages, feed and clean patients, note changes in the patient’s condition to report to the attending physician during rounds, and keep the ward itself clean. Weekly lectures by the staff physicians supplemented and expanded the bedside training. Monthly lectures considered a different area of medical care. One would assume these lessons were repeated by Gage to her Chinese students.
After graduating in 1908, Gage was employed as a night nurse while making the necessary arrangements to move to Changsha in 1909 to join her brother and the Yale team. She thought it was important to learn the language, and took that first year to study it while she worked in the “Yali Hospital” (as it was called) clinic and assisted the doctors in surgery and planning the establishment of the nursing school, which opened in 1913.
This image captures nurse Gage in preparations for surgery at the Yali Hospital, undated (note: faded original image)
THE HSIANG-YA NURSING SCHOOL
Since nursing as a profession was new in China, Gage had the interesting – and daunting – privilege to create the Chinese name for it. She selected “Scholars to Watch and Guard” or more briefly, “Guard Scholars” – to indicate nurses.
Advertising posters were hung around the city to announce the opening of the school, inviting “both boys and girls to be admitted for training in a new profession” (Hume, E., p. 168). The entrance requirements for the “Scholars to Watch and Guard” training were two years of middle school and passing the school’s entrance examinations in Chinese and arithmetic. Parental consent and the payment of school fees were also required. On examination day, twenty girls and forty boys arrived to take the tests. A few applicants backed out, intimidated by the exam questions, but in the end, five girls and seven boys became the first class of trainees.
Nurses and probationary students in the Men’s Nursing School division, undated
Female students, in particular, had problems gaining entrance, as at that time, girls were prepared from a young age for marriage and lived very secluded lives, neither meeting nor socializing with boys outside of immediate family. However, once they demonstrated success in passing the entrance exams, doubtful parents were content to allow them to continue and in the end were very proud to have graduate ‘Guard Scholar’ daughters in crisp white uniforms, ready to serve their communities in such a positive way.
The images above and below are of bandaging class practice. Men and women were taught separately, out of respect for Chinese culture, which kept women apart from men who were outside of their immediate family. Likewise, only men worked in the men’s ward and the women in the women’s wards, at least until the 1930s, by which time women dominated the nursing field in China.
Initially the nursing school and hospital were simply called the Yali School, but in the early teens, both were renamed “Hsiang-Ya” – “Hsiang” indicating “Hunan” and “Ya” indicating “Yale,” highlighting the partnership of Hunanese teachers and students with the Yale teachers and administrators.
Yale School front courtyard, 1909 (note: faded original image)
Preparing salt solutions, 1915
Preparing and sorting of supplies, 1915
In 1927, due to the on-going political turmoil, all foreigners were expelled from China, the Yale-in-China Mission closed, and the team returned to the United States. By 1929, however, the Yale-in-China work resumed, but under Chinese leadership and direction. The hospital and schools of the Yale Mission continue to exist to this day, though they have been absorbed into larger university settings. The relationship between Yale University and China also continues to this day as Yale-China (雅礼协会), based in New Haven, CT, which “bridges the United States and China through collaborative partnerships in education, healthcare, and the arts” (The Yale-China mission statement, from their webpage).
Most of the photographs in Ms. Howard’s scrapbook have short captions on the back, usually with dates. This one reads: “During the Tuchun’s war – bringing in wounded,” unfortunately it is undated.
Gage is among the handful of notable women who brought modern professional nursing to China. In additional to teaching and working in the hospital, Gage helped found the Nurses’ Association of China (NAC) in 1909, signifying the start of a professional nursing movement in the country. The founding members were mostly western missionary nurses who came together to organize, but they were soon joined by Chinese colleagues. By 1915, China established an examination system for the professional certification of nurses, followed by other advances to promote nursing education across the Asian continent.
Nina Gage taking a meal in her home, circa 1915
In 1912, Gage was elected as the first president of the NAC, serving a two-year term. She went on to serve as the chairperson of its education committee. After a brief return to the U.S. during WWI, where she taught wartime nursing at Vassar, Gage returned to Chine and was appointed Dean of the Hsiang-Ya Nursing School, as it was renamed.
Superintendent Gage and the senior class of 1915
GAGE’S POST-CHINA LIFE
Upon returning to the United States in 1927, Nina Gage continued to work in nursing and was active in its support organizations. From 1925 to 1929, she served as president of the International Council of Nurses, representing China. She was executive secretary of the National League for Nursing Education from 1928 to 1931. In 1930, during her term as president of the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association, she started The Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association Bulletin, later renamed The Roosevelt Review, which published news about alumnae activities but also included articles on developments in nursing practice and medicine in general. Throughout her working years, Gage remained active in the National Nursing Association and the American Nurses Association. Gage also published several articles on nursing in China for The American Journal of Nursing and as well as authoring two books: A General History of Nursing in 1933 and Communicable Diseases in 1940.
In the U.S. Gage continued working as a teacher to the next generation of professionals. In 1927 she became educational director and director of the nursing department of the Willard Parker Hospital in NYC. In 1931, the historically Black Hampton Institute (Hampton, VA) appointed Gage as director of its new nursing school. She taught at the Jersey City Medical Center Nursing School during the 1934-1935 school year and then went to the Newport Hospital (Newport, R.I.) as director of its school of nursing from 1935 to 1943. In 1949, Newport Hospital’s Gage Hall was named in her honor. From 1943 until her retirement in 1945, she was the Director of Nursing at the Protestant Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. She died on October 18, 1946, at the age of 63.
Yuhong, Jiang. “Shaping modern nursing development in China before 1949.” International Journal of Nursing Science. 2016 Dec 29; 4 (1): 19-23. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31406712/
As we plan the new year ahead of us, we recognize the historic achievements of Mount Sinai and honor the tremendous work undertaken by the Icahn School of Medicine and the Health System. You will notice that there are fewer references to our deep history in this year’s milestones because we have grown at a super exponential rate in the past 25 years. This year, we’re celebrating the following events…
1850 (175 years ago)
St. Luke’s Hospital Board filed incorporation paperwork, and the charter for the hospital was signed.
David Kearny McDonogh, MD, born into slavery, was the first Black American Ophthalmologist. He changed his middle name in honor of his mentor, John Kearny Rodgers, MD (founder of the New York Eye Infirmary, now the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, with Edward Delafield, MD). They worked together for 11 years at the New York Eye Infirmary.
New York Eye and Ear Infirmary depicted decades later in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, 1875
1875 (150 years ago)
The Mount Sinai Hospital’s formal Outpatient Dispensary Staff was established with Mary Putnam Jacobi, MD, heading the Children’s Clinic and Paul F. Mundé, MD, leading the Gynecology Clinic. Medicine and Surgery also created separate outpatient clinics.
Mary Putnam Jacobi, MD (1842-1906)Paul F. Mundé, MD (1846-1902)
1900 (125 years ago)
The Mount Sinai Hospital Dermatology Service was created under Sigismund Lustgarten, MD.
The Mount Sinai Hospital established the first Neurological Service in a New York hospital.
Early Neurology Chiefs (left to right): Morris Bender, MD (1951-1974), Bernard Sachs, MD (1900-1924), and Israel Wechsler, MD (1938-1950)
The Mount Sinai Hospital purchased its first X-ray machine, which was placed in the corner of a synagogue.
Gold medal awarded to The Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses (later renamed The Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing in 1923) at the Paris Universal Exposition, for excellence.
Graduate pin, circa 1890s to 1922
1925 (100 years ago)
To allow for continuous support, The Mount Sinai Hospital created a permanent fund to provide an endowment for research.
The Daly’s Astoria Sanatorium was founded, which became Mount Sinai Queens in 1999.
Original Daly’s building, circa 1925
Dental outpatient clinic opened at The Mount Sinai Hospital.
1950 (75 years ago)
Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount Sinai West) established its Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
J. William Littler, MD, established hand surgery as the first-of-its-kind service at Roosevelt Hospital.
Hand surgery, 1975
The Mount Sinai Hospital Trustees agreed to staff the health facility at Carver Houses, a public housing project on Madison Avenue across from the hospital.
The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Anesthesiology Department was founded when Milton Adelman, MD, became Director. The residency program, which grew to five residents, replaced all but one of the nurse anesthetists.
Anesthesiology staff, 1957
1975 (50 years ago)
A sports medicine program was established by the Department of Orthopedics at Mount Sinai Medical Center under the leadership of Burton Berson, MD.
St. Luke’s Hospital (now Mount Sinai Morningside) opened the first hospital-based hospice program, and second hospice program of any kind, in the United States for the terminally ill, under the direction of Chaplain Carlton Sweetser and Samuel Klagsbrun, MD.
News of St. Luke’s article, 1976with Dr. Cicely Saunders, known for founding the hospice movement, and Chaplain Sweetser and Dr. Klagsbrun
The Institute of Computer Science, led by Aran Safir, MD, and the Department of Biostatistics, led by Harry Smith, Jr., PhD were established at The Mount Sinai Hospital to conduct research, provide training and offer consulting services. Worked on “developing computerized medical consultation systems and consultation networks” and “computer-based health care delivery systems.”
The Mount Sinai Hospital School of Continuing Education in Nursing was formed using the charter of the recently closed The Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing. The first classes were held in 1976.
The Radiology Department at the Mount Sinai Medical Center (now the Mount Sinai Health System) received a new Delta scanner, allowing it to do CT scans for the first time.
St. Luke’s Hospital created the first National Institutes of Health-funded obesity research center under Theodore B. Van Itallie, MD.
Photo from News of St. Luke’s, 1977showing Drs. Pi-Sunyer and Van Itallie
Eugene Friedman, MD, introduced laser beam surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center using a CO₂ laser knife.
1995 (30 years ago)
Three Internal Medicine residents partnered with one of the nurses at Internal Medicine Associates to start the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program, one of the largest and most recognized home-based primary care programs in the country. Last year we recognized that it had been 140 years since the Mount Sinai Hospital Board of Directors approved the creation of “Outdoor Visiting Physicians” in 1884.
Drs. David Muller, Laurent Adler, and Jeremy Boal, circa 1996
The Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) Consortium for Graduate Medical Education (GME) was established with the assistance of a two-year grant from the New York State Education Department. Barry Stimmel, MD, was named the Dean.
Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton visited the Beth Israel Medical Center (later named Mount Sinai Beth Israel), focusing on breast cancer treatment for Medicare recipients.
Eye on B.I. Winter 1995 issue cover depicting Hilary Rodham Clinton and Morton P. Hyman, then Chairman of the Board of Trustees
The Department of Human Genetics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine became the first approved residency program in Medical Genetics in the country.
Dr. Christine Eng looking at DNA sequencing gel, 1993
New York Eye and Ear Infirmary established New York City’s first hospital-based hearing aid dispensary.
Alex Stagnaro-Green, MD, Dean of Student Affairs, founded the Office of Research Opportunities for students of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
2000 (25 years ago)
The Morningside Clinic, a new home for HIV outpatient services, opened under St. Luke’s Hospital.
The Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Urology announced a new Prostate Health Center endowed by the family of Barbara and Maurice A. Deane.
Mount Sinai Department of Medicine created a hospitalist program.
A Division of Family Medicine was created within Mount Sinai’s Department of Preventive Medicine.
An Integrative Medicine Center for Health and Healing was created at Beth Israel Medical Center.
Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Human Resources Department launched the New Beginnings program as new employee orientation.
The Robert and John M. Bendheim Parkinson’s Disease Center (now the Robert and John M. Bendheim Parkinson and Movement Disorders Center) was established in the Department of Neurology.
Beth Israel Medical Center became the first institution in Manhattan to perform a robotic-assisted cardiothoracic procedure.
2005 (20 years ago)
Researchers at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt constructed a hybrid form of HIV that could be replicated in conventional lab mice, marking the first time non-genetically altered rodents were productively infected with a form of the virus.
Trustee Leon D. Black committed $10 million to Mount Sinai School of Medicine to establish the Black Family Stem Cell Institute. Directed by Gordon Keller, PhD, it integrated research in embryonic stem cells, developmental biology, and adult stem cell biology.
The Beatrix Hamburg Medical Student Training Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry sponsored by The Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation, was created in the Department of Psychiatry, offering training programs that expose medical students to the field of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The Mount Sinai Hospital was the first hospital in New York State to use the Berlin Heart pump to keep a little girl alive for two weeks until she received a heart transplant. The pump was still experimental in the United States.
The Mount Sinai Medical Center signed a new agreement with the New York State Nurses Association giving nurses a new starting salary of $68,003.
The Parental Loss and Bereavement Program (The Mount Sinai Hospital), directed by Claude M. Chemtob, PhD, and coordinated by Joan Roth, PhD, was established in the Department of Psychiatry as a new clinical service for parents who lose a child of any age, for any reason, and for surviving siblings.
Mrs. Henry J. (Catherine) Gaisman endows the Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Martha Stewart announced a generous gift to create The Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai, a new site for the outpatient clinical practice of geriatric medicine.
Center event with Dr. Burton Drayer (left), Martha Kostyra (2nd from right), and Martha Stewart (right), 2006
The Mount Sinai School of Medicine created the Center for Global Health to focus on the “needs of underserved populations, both at home and abroad.”
The Department of Surgery created a Global Surgical Health program as part of the general surgical residency. See page 10 of this 2008-2009 Annual Report for a description of Global Initiatives in countries such as Peru, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic.
The Asian Services Program was established at Beth Israel to meet the health needs of the Asian American community by providing easy and seamless access to high quality inpatient and outpatient care to bridge gaps in patient care through extensive community outreach, particularly in Chinatown’s Chinese community.
The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary created the Sleep Center.
2010 (15 years ago)
After a magnitude 7 earthquake in Haiti, Mount Sinai sent a team of 20 to National Hospital in Port Au Prince, which included surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, a pediatrician, OR techs, and support staff. Led by Dr. Michael Marin and facilitated by Dr. Ernest Benjamin, the team returned home after seven days, having performed over 120 surgical procedures, helping to establish record-keeping systems, and delivering 4,000 pounds of medical supplies.
Mount Sinai Team in Port Au Prince, Haiti
The first Mount Sinai School of Medicine Postdoctoral Symposium is held with Nobel Prize-winning Harold Varmus, MD, as speaker.
Beth Israel Medical Center was the first hospital in New York City to be recognized as national leaders in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index (HEI).
Top Ten Tips for serving the LGBT Patient Population, circa 2012
From Destination Diversity : Continuum’s Diversity Initiative newsletter, Fall 2010
Dianne LaPointe Rudow, DNP, joined Mount Sinai Medical Center to head the nation’s first multi-organ Living Donor Wellness Center.
New York Eye and Ear Infirmary founded The Shelley and Steven Einhorn Clinical Research Center to discover a new generation of treatments and diagnoses for degenerative eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.
Mount Sinai School of Medicine created the Drug Toxicity Signature Center, with a grant of $11.6 million from the NIH, to develop cell signatures that could be used to predict the effects of certain drugs and drug combinations.
2015 (10 years ago)
New York Eye and Ear Infirmary opened a new state-of-the-art laser vision correction facility as part of comprehensive ophthalmology services offered through the hospital.
The dissolution of The Mount Sinai Alumni, Inc. was approved by New York State. The Alumni relations function was transferred to the Office of Alumni and Development.
The Mount Sinai Health System established The Spine Hospital at Mount Sinai (now Mount Sinai Spine), the first of its kind in New York City.
The Phillips Beth Israel School of Nursing (now Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing), previously affiliated with Pace University, offered the entire curriculum under its own New York State Board of Regents accreditation.
The Mount Sinai Health System announced that Mount Sinai Beth Israel Brooklyn would now be known as Mount Sinai Brooklyn. The change was an important part of Mount Sinai Health System’s overall brand strategy, intended to establish a concise, community-oriented identity for our hospital campuses. For a history of Mount Sinai Brooklyn, check out this post.
The Women in Medical Scientist Training Program (WiMSTP), a student-run organization with an aim to advocate for and support the success of women in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai through mentorship and educational efforts, was founded.
WiMSTP in August, 2016
As a result of the activism and advocacy of medical students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Racism and Bias Initiative was launched to explicitly address and undo racism and bias in all areas of medical school, and to center racial justice, health equity, and underrepresented voices and experiences of all medical education colleagues within the Department of Medical Education.
The Mount Sinai − National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute officially opened.
An OncoEndocrinology Clinic was established with Emily Gallagher, MD, PhD, as its first director, to provide evaluations and care for oncology patients.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai announced the creation of the Mount Sinai Institute for Systems Biomedicine to develop new transdisciplinary approaches for basic and translational research, facilitating precision medicine. Founding Director Ravi Iyengar, PhD, sought to use convergent approaches to integrate cell biology and human physiology with pathophysiology and electronic medical records using computational models.
Dr. Iyengar at his desk, 2017
The Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Environmental Health Sciences Laboratory in the Department of Preventive Medicine was dedicated in recognition of the late Senator’s tireless efforts to address children’s environmental health concerns during almost 30 years in Congress. The Lautenberg Laboratory brought together a team of physicians and researchers to analyze threats to pediatric health from air pollution and household chemicals, as well as social stressors and nutrition.
The Blau Center for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disease at Kravis Children’s Hospital opened.
Master of Science in Biostatistics program began at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Graduate School Biomedical Sciences.
The Mount Sinai Health System announced the creation of the Institute for Liver Medicine.
Mount Sinai Youth Advisory Council was created to enhance the delivery of care at The Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital; works with Child Life Program.
Dean Dennis S. Charney, MD, announced the creation of the Center for Spirituality and Health within the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Led by Deborah Marin, MD, the Center develops clinical, educational, and research activities designed to enhance our understanding of the significant role spirituality plays in the prevention of and recovery from physical and mental illnesses.
2020 (five years ago)
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai announced the establishment of the Institute for Genomic Health. Eimear Kenny, PhD, was appointed Director of the Institute, and Noura Abul-Husn, MD, PhD, as Clinical Director.
On March 7, Mount Sinai West admitted the first COVID-19 patient in the Health System.
Healthcare workers at Mount Sinai Queens on June 2, 2020Staff of Mount Sinai Queens outside during the nine minutes of silenceHealthcare workers at Mount Sinai Queens on June 2, 2020
On June 2, 2020, Mount Sinai employees showed solidarity with those protesting the killing of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement in Minnesota. In a broadcast email, leadership announced “at 3 pm, we will show support for our community; support for our Black colleagues, family, friends, and neighbors; and support for those who are peacefully protesting the killing of George Floyd, and so many others before him. At 3:05 pm, we will begin nine minutes of silence, representing how long Mr. Floyd was unable to breathe. Please follow proper masking and social distancing rules during this event.”
Mount Sinai announced that surgeons performed the first-ever spinal tethering surgery in New York City to correct idiopathic scoliosis—a sideways curvature in the spine—in children and adolescents.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai announced the creation of an Institute for Health Equity Research. The new Institute will be dedicated to examining the causes and magnitude of health and health care disparities impacting nonwhite, low-income, immigrant, uninsured, LGBTQ+, and other populations across all ages, abilities, and genders. Carol Horowitz, MD and Lynne Richardson, MD we named Directors of the Institute.
Emma K. T. Benn, DrPH, MPH, founded the Center for Scientific Diversity at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, an initiative of the Dean’s Office and the Institute for Health Equity Research to foster, develop, and assess empirically supported practices that promote and enhance scientific innovation, diversity, and equitable advancement within the biomedical investigator workforce.
Design by Jill GregoryPhotograph by Marcia E. Wilson
“There are so many changes and incidents that occur in an institution of this magnitude in the course of a year, and which together combine to make the total picture, that it is difficult within the time at my disposal, and within the bounds of your patience, to choose those that will most truly reflect its life.”
In the 1940s several of the hospitals in our system started monthly newsletters to keep the staff informed of hospital events and interesting news of individual staff members. They were created on 8×11 paper and featured colorful covers that represented the holiday or season of the month. In celebration of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, the Aufses Archives would like to present some of the covers, and related articles for your enjoyment.
This 1954 cover from the News of St. Luke’s (aka Mount Sinai Morningside), includes familiar harvest and pilgrim themes for the holiday. Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing published their own newsletter called Cap and Bib. This 1955 holiday issue features a family-sized gobbler!This News of St. Luke’s depicts a turkey getting its pre-holiday turkey trot checkup!Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing later changed its newsletter’s name to Plaid Communique , and this 1969 issue highlights a connection between thankfulness and medical care.This 1949 issue of Mount Sinai Hospital’s The Capsule depicts charming graphics and relates a lovely story of gratefulness expressed during the holiday season.
Hospital decorations, even then, were kept to a minimum on the floors, but dinning rooms often had holiday-themed centerpieces on tables, turkey dinners with all the fixings in staff cafeterias and on patient trays, which also included pumpkin or apple pie for dessert. St. Luke’s Hospital’s chapel also featured a altar centerpiece reflecting the autumn/ Thanksgiving season (below).
Newsletters featuring colorful covers, staff stories, photographs, and hospital news were very popular through the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. However, in the mid-1960s the format of the newsletters changed to a newspaper format with a header across the top and news stories on the first page, instead of covers like these displayed above. Staff continued to be well informed about hospital events, the activities of various departments, and important news about colleagues, but sadly some of the charm of the early newsletters was lost in the transition.
From the staff at The Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Archives to all our colleagues and readers, Happy Thanksgiving and our best wishes for the following holiday season and New Year!
William Augustus Muhlenberg, left, (September 16, 1796-April 8, 1877), born in Philadelphia, PA., was an Episcopal clergyman and an influential educator. His great-grandfather Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787), immigrated to America in 1741 from Hanover, Germany in response to the call for a Lutheran minister to pastor several churches in Pennsylvania, and is considered the father of Lutheranism in America. An uncle of William’s fought in the Revolutionary War, and his grandfather served as a member of the First and Second Continental Congress and as Speaker of the House of Representatives under President George Washington.
Muhlenberg was educated at the Philadelphia Academy and the Grammar School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating from the university in 1815. In 1817, he was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church and became assistant to Bishop William White (1748–1836). In 1820, Muhlenberg was ordained a priest, and until 1826, he was rector of St. James’ Church in Lancaster, PA, before resigning his charge to study the educational systems of Europe.
However, before leaving for Europe he agreed to fill the pulpit at St. George’s Church in Flushing, Queens, as a six-month replacement. This changed the course of his life. At St. George’s, he became acquainted with a group of men who wished to establish a boy’s school, and he agreed to lead it. Called The Flushing Institute, Muhlenberg initiated a successful curriculum for the education of boys that was duplicated in many other schools in the country.
Over time, Muhlenberg developed plans to establish a college and grammar school on a piece of land in Queens, NY, which then became known as College Point. He intended to merge The Flushing Institute with the school there, but the financial crash of 1837 left the funding promises unfulfilled. Without adequate endowment, the state legislature denied the charter for the new schools.
Muhlenberg painted by Jacob Eicholtz, 1836
In 1845, Muhlenberg left The Flushing Institute in the hands of his assistant and moved to New York City to become rector of the Church of the Holy Communion, a church built by his sister, Mary A. Rogers, as a memorial to her late husband, John, who desired to found a church where rich and poor would worship together as one community. An early proponent of the social gospel, Muhlenberg founded various social welfare-related ministries through the Church of the Holy Communion, to assist the poor community which surrounded the church building at West 20th Street and Sixth Avenue.
Muhlenberg came to see that access to medical care was a serious need of the community. On October 18, 1846, the day set aside to honor St. Luke the Physician on the liturgical calendar, he announced to his congregation that he would set aside half of the church’s Sunday offering for the founding of a hospital in which those without means to pay could come and be treated without charge. It took quite a while to raise the funds to build it, but St. Luke’s Hospital opened in 1858 on West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue. The archival collection of materials about St. Luke’s Hospital are found here.
The first St. Luke’s Hospital building on West 54th Street, at Fifth Avenue
In 1866, seeing the need to care for disabled children and the elderly, Muhlenberg founded the Church Industrial Community of St. Johnland on Long Island. The Community would train the children for employment within their physical limitations and provide care for the elderly who had no family to care for them. He bought 535 acres with 1.5 miles of shorefront on the Long Island Sound near Kings Park. This hospital exists still, as an elder care facility. Materials on this facility are found here.
Rev. Muhlenberg had rooms at St. Luke’s Hospital where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He died on April 8, 1877, in St. Luke’s Hospital, and was buried in the St. Johnland Cemetery. More information about him can be found in the Archives, find his catalog record here.
In 2019, the Archives Committee began promoting October 18 as Founder’s Day to remember and honor Muhlenberg’s contributions to our city in founding St. Luke’s Hospital, now Mount Sinai Morningside. Last year, in conjunction with the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee, a historical marker honoring Muhlenberg was placed in the garden in front of the W. 113th Street entrance. This year, as in prior years, a dish which reflects an 1850s diet will be on the menu at Luke’s café. Mount Sinai employees can check The Daily for additional events celebrating the day.
Authored by Michala Biondi, Associate Archivist in The Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. MD Archives
This year we’re discussing aspects of Mount Sinai’s history as a community by joining forces with the Institute for Equity and Justice in Health Sciences Education through a series of three Chats for Change programs. In this post I’ll provide some background about what Chats for Change is, how it came to be, the Institute team we’re working with this year, and what the Archives brought to table.
About Chats for Change
In 2015, Mount Sinai launched the Racism and Bias Initiative (RBI) to center underrepresented voices and experiences, recognize the historical underpinnings of racism and bias in medicine, and explicitly address and undo racism and bias in all functional areas of the medical school. Beginning in the fall of 2018, the Department of Medical Education launched “Chats for Change”—a series of dialogues centered on racism and bias in medicine.
Chats for Change was developed in response to medical education staff, faculty, and medical students who wanted dedicated time to engage in a dialogue as a community and deepen their understanding of and ability to address racism. These sessions were based on the notion that in order to respond to racism and to be anti-racist, we must engage in dialogue, learning, and action. Participants include staff, faculty, and students from across the School and Health System. There is also a National Chats for Change available to all medical schools in North America.
The Process
How does this work? The structure of Chats for Change remains the same regardless of the topic. Held over Zoom, facilitators provide some introductory background information and review the grounding assumptions for the dialogue about to take place. The grounding assumptions that I find change the power dynamics are “everyone here is all we need” and “refrain from expecting experts or others to know best.” In both education and healthcare, there is deeply ingrained respect for and deference to expertise. Asking participants to shift out of this mindset is a challenge and requires intentional interactions outside the traditional norms and hierarchy.
The facilitators review the process and hen there is a brief check-in to get everyone acquainted. The next portion is framing and defining that day’s topic with a brief presentation, about ten minutes long.
We then review norms for the breakout groups in which the participants are about to participate:
All of us are taught misinformation about our own group(s) and about members of other groups
We agree not to blame ourselves or others for the misinformation we have been taught, and to accept responsibility for not repeating misinformation after we have learned otherwise
The participants enter the breakout rooms with some questions to guide their discussion, keeping in mind that there will be a debrief with the whole group afterwards to share any themes, insights, similarities and/or differences (as shown on the slide here). Every session ends by asking “given today’s dialogue, what do you need to learn and unlearn?”, followed by a request for feedback and a preview of the next week’s topic.
2024 Spring/Summer Season
In planning the 2024 Chats for Change season, Leona Hess, PhD, MSW, Co-Director of the Institute, invited me (the Aufses Archives’ director) to join in on brainstorming topics for discussion.
For this year, we arrived at the following groupings:
Series on Understanding Islamophobia and Antisemitism
Given the horrific increase in hate crimes against Muslim and Jewish people, it’s imperative for us to commit to deeper understanding and reflection.
Antiracism Fellow Series
This year’s Institute for Equity and Justice in Health Sciences Education Antiracism Fellows will introduce new topics, challenging all of us to critically examine pressing contemporary issues and the role of medical students.
Mount Sinai History Series
Pulling from resources in the Aufses Archives, we will uncover how Mount Sinai’s past shows up in our present, how equitable treatment regardless of the ability to pay is a relatively new concept, and how our patient populations have been recorded and reported at different moments in our hospitals’ histories.
Rejuvenate and Restore (R&R) Series
With everything going on, we can still find time for joy, future dreaming, and collective care.
In addition to these series, there were one-off chats on decolonizing global health, cybersafety, the rural vs. urban divide, and much more.
Mount Sinai History Series
The first Mount Sinai History Series took place on April 23rd, exploring the question, How Does Our Past Show Up in Our Present? by reflecting on our hospitals’ and medical school’s founding charters, articles of incorporation, and mission statements.
At Mount Sinai we often cite our origin story, the opening of Jews’ Hospital in New York in 1855, as a core element of our identity: to treat those who were refused treatment elsewhere (at the time, people of Jewish faith, and accident victims). As a health system, we are now multiple hospitals and a medical school. Pulled from resources in the Aufses Archives, we considered how the histories of these institutions shape us today. To do this, I started with a quote from the Charter of the Jews’ Hospital (which became Mount Sinai Hospital in 1866).
New York State Charter of the Jews’ Hospital in New York
January 16, 1852
We have associated and hereby do associate ourselves into a benevolent, charitable and scientific Society… to be known… by the name of The Jews’ Hospital in New York… the particular business, purpose and object of such… will be the medical and surgical aid to persons of the Jewish persuasion.
Quote from the 1852 Charter
First Mission Statement of The Mount Sinai Medical Center
1979
The focus was on the mission statements and articles of incorporation that state the reasons why the hospitals were created and what they were intending to do. I have found that these statements do resonate with our values and mission today, so I wanted to see how others felt. We asked the Chats participants, “what parts of our legacies most resonate with you?” There was a good discussion.
The second session, Unified Care?, was about how patients have historically been segregated by ability to pay and other factors. This was co-hosted by Dr. David Muller, Director of the Institute for Equity and Justice in Health Sciences Education. We are working towards health equity, we want everyone to have the same care, but there has always been a way of dividing patients that persists today. Goal was to show past practices–the general open ward layout, transition to semi-private rooms, and entirely private care–that demonstrate how we evolved into the patient placements we see in today’s hospitals.
The final session, Who Sought Treatment, took place in August and covered how hospitals have tracked and reported demographics of the patients who sought treatment. Today we are familiar with tracking patient outcomes by identities, such as race or gender–but this has not always been the case. As New York’s demographics have changed through time, so too have the data recorded about people seeking medical care. We looked at hospital reporting to see how patient populations have been recorded and reported at different moments in our hospitals’ histories. We reflected on how our practices have evolved.
As Mount Sinai Hospital was established to care for immigrants, nativity was most frequently reported. The sex, occupation, age, and other categories were also typically tabulated.
Report on patients from Mount Sinai Hospital’s 1866 Annual Report, page 24
Listed: Number of admitted and refused in a single month (over the course of the year) and age.
Report on patients from the 1866 Annual Report, page 25
Listed: civil Condition, term of Residence in the U.S., nativity, and occupation.
Beth Israel Hospital Annual Report from 1903 stated, “the nativities of the patients reveal at once the broad spirit prevailing in the management of the Hospital. Beth Israel knows no difference in creed, class or color, when suffering humanity appeals to it for aid and relief?”
St. Luke’s Hospital Annual report, 1910
Listed nationality and religious denominations, and occupations of patients.
Mount Sinai is based in East Harlem, over half of the population are of Puerto Rican and Dominican ancestry. This document shows when the hospital first became cognizant of the growing population and demographic shifts in the late 1920s. The language is not current, and we say Latino instead of “‘Spanish’ nativity.”
I am so grateful to Leona, David, and the team (Jay especially), who were incredibly supportive partners. They have a the structure of Chats for Change in place, facilitate adeptly, handle the logistics seamlessly—piloting the Mount Sinai History series could not have happened without their partnership.
Tim Hayes, M.P.A, M.L.I.S. is the Circulation Supervisor at the Levy Library. As part of completing his Master of Library and Information Sciences degree earlier this year, he interned with the Aufses Archives and processed the Henry Dazian Estate and Dazian Foundation for Medical Research Records. In this post, Tim shares what he was able to find in that collection as it relates to the naming of the Dazian Pavilion. See this link for Part 1 of this blog post.
Coming into this project, I knew there was a question that hadn’t been answered yet (when was the Dazian Pavilion at Beth Israel Hospital named?), and a collection of materials corresponding to the presumed namesake (Henry Dazian Estate and Dazian Foundation for Medical Research records).
Henry Dazian set the majority of his estate, under the guidance of his executor, Emil Friedlander, to the establishment of Dazian Foundation for Medical Research. The foundation was established with a 25-year term with a primary mission of “the advancement of medical and allied scientific knowledge.” The estate stipulated it was to have a self-perpetuating board that consisted of five Doctors of Medicine and four laymen.
My first goal was to see if an eponymous building was a condition of Henry Dazian’s will. Looking through the multiple copies present in the Foundation records, I was able to determine two things. Firstly, Dazian had not set down any naming stipulations related to bequests in his will, and secondly, upon the dissolution of the Foundation, all remaining money in the estate was to be distributed to hospitals, sanitariums, and similar such institutions. No specific institutions were named.
The next breadcrumb was the minutes of a special meeting for the Directors of the Dazian Foundation of Medical Research. Held on November 9th, 1961, these minutes include a resolution “unanimously adopted” to distribute the foundation’s funds to various institutions, including: “$850,000 to Beth Israel Hospital for the Dazian Pavilion.” This is equivalent to about $8.7 million in 2024 dollars (based on Bureau of Labor Statistics information). The consensus among the Archives staff was that such a sum merited a named endowment at that time.
I also found a note in an auditor’s report, saying that “on May 14 of 1959, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation adopted a resolution to donate $100,000 to the Actor’s [sic] Fund of America, payable after May, 1962…Designated rooms, or a wing, are to be dedicated to the memory of Henry Dazian.”
It’s important to be careful about your own preconceived narratives as a researcher, and here mine got me derailed; I took that comment to mean the Foundation was seeking to memorialize Dazian before May of 1959, and started looking closely at the correspondence that predated that. Despite reading through a great deal of the correspondence leading up to that point, I found no other mentions of memorializing Dazian.
It was only after I started looking at the correspondence after that point that I noticed a 1960 letter from Arthur Fishberg, president of the Dazian Foundation for Medical Research from 1956 until its dissolution in 1962), to a Dr. Rachmilewitz at The Hebrew University in Israel. Attempting to clear up a miscommunication, Fishberg said that the board had planned three projects within New York “as the most suitable memorializations[sic] of Mr. Dazian in the city in which he passed his entire life.”
Realizing that I had been looking in the wrong direction, I decided to hunt more thoroughly for the minutes from that annual meeting in May of 1959. These showed a bit more of a story. In that meeting, Friedlander proposed a motion to give $100,000 to the Actors’ Fund. This must have been a somewhat contentious vote; the minutes make a note that two of the Foundation’s board members voted against the proposal, and records state how each member of the board voted – a rarity among the minutes, which may imply an unusual level of disagreement.
Additional meetings about the ultimate disposition of capital funds were held in both July and October of 1959, but no minutes of either meeting were included in the records we possess. Finally, on December 2, 1959, the board members of the Foundation were urged to attend a meeting “to discuss a matter of great importance.”
In the minutes of this meeting, Alfred M. Rose proposed a motion to allocate $800,000 to the Beth Israel Hospital. The motion was seconded by Emil Friedlander, and unanimously approved by the board. An allocation is also set aside for the Hospital for Joint Diseases, and each trustee of the foundation is given the right to allocate $25,000 to any institutions permitted by Henry Dazian in his will. Taken together, this finally satisfied our curiosities about the naming of the Dazian Pavilion.
The newly processed records provide a rich body of historical materials for interested researchers. Future avenues of investigation include studying the lives of those who lived in Dazian’s real estate holdings and the living conditions of New York City at that time. The notes of the Foundation members provide insight into their decision-making about what research was funded, which in turn, shaped the history of medicine. Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg, for instance, often included the notes and opinions of the board members showing how decisions were often made on the basis of age, race, and other characteristics of the applicants that would now be protected, and it was shocking to see such blatant discrimination.
Now fully open to research, with description to allow intellectual access, the Aufses Archives is eager to assist those who may also have a seemingly straightforward, or profoundly complicated, topic to investigate.
Sketch of Dazian Pavilion exterior, circa 1929. At the time it was built, Beth Israel believed it to be “the tallest hospital building in the world.” (The final building only stood at thirteen stories.)
In our “Familiar Names: A ‘Who’s Who’ of Beth Israel Buildings” post, you may have noticed that one building is conspicuously absent: the Dazian building. Dazian, the original building on the Petrie campus, was simply referred to as the Beth Israel Hospital for the first part of its history, given that it was the only Beth Israel Hospital building at the time it was opened (to much acclaim) in 1929. During the 1950s and 1960s, the hospital went through a building boom, likely necessitating building names, and campus maps show that the Dazian Pavilion was labeled as such by 1963. But who was Dazian? You might think Beth Israel’s institutional records would hold a clue, but, after receiving several requests to provide the backstory, a few of archivists at the Aufses Archives had approached this research from different angles, and never turned up anything directly mentioning the building’s naming. Sometimes the answers to seemingly straightforward questions are simply not well documented.
We strongly suspected that the building was named for Henry Dazian, a famed Broadway costumer from a prominent family. Henry Dazian was the third generation of his family to own the costuming business and had a history of philanthropy. He served as a trustee for the Actors’ Fund, which was established in 1882 to provide for the burial, retirement, and healthcare needs of those working in the theatrical professions, who were often denied access to services and charities during this period. He also donated to Beth Israel during his lifetime, particularly (and perhaps fittingly) in 1929 when the institution was fundraising to eliminate its debt following the construction of the building that would eventually carry the Dazian name some thirty years later.
We were hoping that the Henry Dazian Estate and Dazian Foundation for Medical Research records would hold clues for solving this mystery. In addition to its Beth Israel connection, the Foundation also worked with Mount Sinai doctors by, among other things, funding scholarships for refugee physicians during World War II. The collection was seeing increased interest from researchers, but it remained largely inaccessible because it was not completely processed. Processing became a priority, and when Tim Hayes, Levy Library Circulation Services Supervisor, joined the Archives for an internship, we were grateful that this collection received renewed attention. He processed this collection, which spans more than fourteen document boxes, and was able to keep an eye out for answers to some of our Dazian-related questions as he reviewed the material. Stay tuned for our next blog post, where Tim takes us on a deep dive of his research into this question.
This year, Nurses’ Week is May 6th through 12th, and the theme is “Nurses Make the Difference.” To recognize the invaluable contributions of nurses, here’s a brief overview of the evolution of nurses’ responsibilities and education.
In the early days of American nursing, nurses simply observed changes in the patient’s condition and reported to the attending physician. They were taught to change bandages, and feed and clean patients and were in charge over the ward. At this point, any woman could take the job and at times, some unsavory characters filled the position. There was no formal training or educational system in place.
Women’s Ward, St. Luke’s Hospital
By the mid-1800s, nurses were entrusted with taking vitals, preparing nourishing meals to meet specific patients needs, and administering medications on the instructions of the physicians. They also began to assist in operating theaters.
As medical and scientific breakthroughs were made, nursing benefited from better instruction on the ward, supplemented with weekly class lectures by medical staff. By the 1870s the first American nursing school opened. Instruction started on the wards, and the students covered the wards for the first few years.
The first of the Mount Sinai Health System Hospitals schools, The Mount Sinai Training School for Nurses, opened in 1881. Its history is chronicled in the book The Forty-Seven Hundred. The former St. Luke’s Hospital Training School for Nurses, now Mount Sinai Morningside, opened in 1888 and in 1896 the former Roosevelt Hospital, now Mount Sinai West, opened their training school. Read some of that history here. Lastly, The Beth Israel Hospital School of Nursing, now Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing, opened in 1902.
Roosevelt Hospital nursing instruction on ward by Alfred Eisenstaedt – The LIFE Picture Collection, Getty Images
As scientific break throughs were made, nursing benefited from better instruction on the ward, with weekly lectures by medical staff.
An example of the early curriculum for nurses, taken from the Roosevelt Hospital School for Nursing, included monthly focus on aspects of anatomy, physiology, materials medica (the sources, nature, properties, and preparation of drugs), gynecology, digestion, ophthalmology and otology, the practice of medicine, the ethics of private nursing, massage, nutrition and cooking, and surgery, including surgical diseases and emergencies. Over time, the curriculum expanded and as graduate nurses were hired to cover the floors, student nurses began to move from ward duty to attend classes full time.
Nursing students in class
By the 1960s, nursing associations were pressing for university-based bachelor degree programs for RNs, as opposed to hospital-based certificate programs. This was accomplished by the early 1970s as financial struggles added to the pressure to close hospital-based schools.
Today we honor our highly educated nursing staff, the back bone of health care.
In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Aufses Archives would like to highlight one of the outstanding physicians who practiced at the former St. Luke’s Hospital.
Virginia Kanick (1925-2017) was a radiologist at a time when a small percentage of physicians were women and fewer practiced in that particular area. She was born in Pennsylvania, but when she was about fourteen, the family moved to Richmond, Virginia to be closer to her older brother, who was already practicing medicine there. Kanick, however, never did become a ‘southern belle;’ she described herself as having an “aggressive” personality and loved to learn. She was the high school valedictorian and chose to return north to pursue college at Barnard College, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest, and most prestigious, academic honor society in the United States.
Left: Dr. Virginia Kanick reviewing X-rays in 1971
At Barnard, she investigated many subject specialties, from anthropology to classical studies, archaeology to Russian history, before settling into science classes with the intention to pursue medicine. She earned her MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1951 and then interned at Case Western Reserve. She applied to a radiology residency program at Columbia, but their fall semester quota was full. Accepted into the program starting in January, the administrators suggested she spend a few months at St. Luke’s Hospital, an affiliated teaching hospital, before joining the Columbia program. However, she enjoyed the atmosphere and comradery of St. Luke’s so much that she completed the radiology residency there before receiving an appointment as an attending and spending her career at St. Luke’s.
Dr. Kanick was an enthusiastic teacher, especially when new equipment and technology was involved. She published over thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals. She became the first woman president of the St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center’s Medical Board in 1980-1981 and in fact, as far as she knew, she was the first president of the Medical Board who was not a surgeon or internist, and quite possibly, the first woman to be the president of a medical board in a major teaching hospital. She was very involved in the broader professional community by serving on the board of directors of the Medical Society of the State of New York, as the secretary and officer of the Medical Society of the County of New York, and as Director of the New York State Radiology Society, among a long list of other service commitments.
(Picture right, Medical Board meeting, r-l, Drs. Kanick, Beekman, Knox and unidentified.)
However, she felt that the most important role she was involved in was working on several committees for the Radiological Society of North America, and particularly, for serving as their representative to the Advisory Committee for Medical Devices at the Food and Drug Administration, reviewing new technologies including MRI, CT, and PET scans, for seven years.
Dr. Kanick circa 1989
However, Dr. Kanick was not all work and no play. Though she never married, she was the beloved “auntie” to her much older siblings’ four children, hosting them on vacations here and aboard. As they grew up and married, Kanick enjoyed their 11 grandnieces and nephews and 19 great-grandnieces and nephews. Upon her retirement in 1989, one of her St. Luke’s colleagues remarked, “In spite of her busy schedule, she has made it her business to know of our personal joys and to genuinely join us in celebrating, or giving us support, advice and true empathy in times of suffering.”
Virginia Kanick fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease and passed away in 2017. She is fondly remembered by hospital staff and the many residents who trained under her guidance.
Left: Dr. Kanick fellow volunteer, Michele Feldman, circa 2016
To learn more about Dr. Kanick’s life, in her own words, watch her interview with Dr. Norma Braun. here.
Reflecting on Beth Israel’s rich history, we want to honor the many namesakes of the 16th Street campus. This post provides brief biographies of some of the men and women whose contributions to Beth Israel’s legacy are more than name deep.
Charles H. Silver was a career public servant, including a term as the President of the New York City Board of Education. He joined the Beth Israel Board of Trustees in 1938 and was its President starting in 1947. He was also active in Jewish-Christian interfaith matters and was a staunch supporter of the Phillips School of Nursing. A highly influential man, the Archives has photographs of Charles Silver with leaders ranging from Vice President Alben Barkley (Truman administration) to Pope John Paul to the discoverer of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming. In 1952, the ground was broken for the Charles H. Silver Clinic at Beth Israel Hospital, named in his honor. We have several blog posts dedicated to his legacy, and his New York Times obituary provides a more complete biography.
The Linsky Pavilion is named for Belle and Jack Linsky. Belle Linsky was a Beth Israel Hospital Board of Trustees member, and her husband, Jack Linsky, was the founder of Swingline Staples. The couple was also known for their high-profile art collection, which was eventually donated to the Metropolitan Museum. The Archives catalog has a number of digitized materials about the Linsky Pavilion, which, described as an “ultramodern” and an “unusual circular building” first opened in 1966 and greatly increased Beth Israel’s number of beds.
The Karpas Pavilion, opened in 1966 as a patient care unit, was named for Irving D. Karpas. A childhood friend of Charles Silver, he was a clothing manufacturer and stockbroker. He joined the Beth Israel Hospital Board of Trustees in 1938 and remained on until his death in 1971. His New York Times obituary provides a more complete biography, and photographs of the Karpas Pavilion are online here.
Baird Hall initially opened in 1967 as “a 20-story, 144-unit staff apartment house.” It was named for David G. Baird, who was a stockbroker and philanthropist. His New York Times obituary is available here.
Finally, the 16th Street campus was named for Milton and Carroll Petrie in 1992 due to their more than $21 million in contributions to Beth Israel (according to the 1991 Annual Report) and included the largest single gift ($10 million) to Beth Israel at its time in 1986. Milton J. Petrie was a clothes retailer and Beth Israel Board of Trustees member. The Archives has digitized and undigitized materials about Petrie online here.
Authored by Stefana Breitwieser, Digital Archivist
