The story of Tufts Medical Center and the Floating Hospital for Children encompasses the history of medicine in Boston. It was founded in 1796 as the Boston Dispensary, where district physicians provided free medical care to the poor through annual subscriptions from wealthy Boston families, including such luminaries as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Fueled by a huge influx of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, the city of Boston rapidly expanded and diversified. So too did the hos...

“Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King”* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge.Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize WinnerNAMED ONE ...

Baystate Medical Center was established in 1976 with the merger of the Medical Center of Western Massachusetts and Wesson Memorial Hospital. Baystate�s roots extend to 1870, when Springfield City Hospital was one of just 178 acute-care hospitals in the United States. It was renamed Springfield Hospital in 1883 and moved to its current location at 759 Chestnut Street in 1889. The Hampden Homeopathic Hospital was founded in 1900, followed by the Wesson Maternity Hospital eight years later. A...

The name "Luneburg" was coined for King George II of England, who was also the duke of Luneburg, Germany, in 1727. The final name, Lunenburg, was probably a result of misspelling in the early records of the town. On August 1, 1728, Lunenburg was officially granted township but, as early as 1726, a variety of industries had been started and twenty-six houses had been built. In the late nineteenth century, the town returned to predominately agriculture and, today, is a rural residential comm...

This account of the infamous asylum is "an excellent record of greed and corruption, but it is also a powerful testimonial to compassion and kindness" ( Hidden City).The Quaker City and its hospitals were pioneers in the field of mental health. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, its institutions were crowded and patients lived in shocking conditions. The mentally ill were quartered with the dangerously criminal. By 1906, the city had purchased a vast...

Tuberculosis, also known as consumption, the White Plague, or simply TB, was the number-one killer in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many physicians of the era advised their patients to chase the cure for tuberculosis in the Southwest, where the region�s clean, dry, fresh air, high altitude, and sunshine offered relief for most and recovery for some. New Mexico, called the �well country,� was particularly eager to promote itself as a mecca for lungers with the...

Rare and vintage photographs depict the interesting and tragic history of the Essex Mountain Sanatorium. Founded in 1907 amidst protests and a burgeoning suffrage movement, Essex Mountain Sanatorium was the result of two Montclair, New Jersey, women who successfully lobbied local government to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium in a then vacant cottage for wayward girls. From these humble beginnings, the hospital grew to become one of the finest treatment centers in the nation, expanding ...

Jack and Eldora Vetter began Vetter Health Services (VHS) in 1975 with the belief that elderly people deserve dignity in life. Forty years later, what began as the couple's personal mission has grown to include more than 30 award-winning senior-care facilities home to 2,200 residents and patients who are cared for by 3,500 team members. Based in Elkhorn, Nebraska, VHS is recognized as a national leader in providing safe, comfortable, and happy senior living centers. Each facility is built ...

Pittsburgh natives have recognized Dixmont State Hospital by its towering boiler house smokestack that stood prominently along busy Route 65. It has been a topic of curiosity, urban exploration, ghost hunts, and historical research; but prior to its closing in 1984, Dixmont State Hospital stood as a refuge to the mentally ill for three counties in western Pennsylvania. A majestic study in the Kirkbride design of asylum architecture, Dixmont was originally built by the Western Pennsylvania ...

A richly detailed history that "uncovers the challenges and limitations of our increasing reliance on genetic data in medical decision making" (Shobita Parthasarathy, author of Building Genetic Medicine).Medical geneticists began mapping the chromosomal infrastructure piece by piece in the 1970s by focusing on what was known about individual genetic disorders. Five decades later, their infrastructure had become an edifice for prevention, allowing expectant...

We are living in a stressful world, yet despite our familiarity with the notion, stress remains an elusive concept. In The Age of Stress, Mark Jackson explores the history of scientific studies of stress in the modern world. In particular, he reveals how the science that legitimates and fuels current anxieties about stress has been shaped by a wide range of socio-political and cultural, as well as biological, factors: stress, he argues, is both a condition and a metaphor. In order...

We are now are own elders, as we must forget about your own personal platitudes whereas sometimes some lights that shines twice as bright, burns half as long, as sometimes we all tend to shine ever so brightly. For one moment, have you ever possibly & conceivably considered your way of thinking about the world is totally wrong. The main problem we all are facing is that so much research is based upon biases & personal opinions, and not pure research. This writer submits that a person or pe...