“When a man of Sayre’s experience”: David Gollaher, “From Ritual to Science: The Medical Transformation of Circumcision in America,” Journal of Social History (Fall 1994), 5–36.
“men of well-sifted reputations”: “Remarks to the Graduating Class of Bellevue Hospital College Medical School” (1872), copy on file at New York Academy of Medicine.
Chapter 9: Nightingales
“is principally remembered for three reasons”: National Archives, “British Battles, Crimea, 1854,” www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/crimea.
“It’s not worthwhile to clean him”: Christopher Gill and Gillian Gill, “Nightingale in Scutari: Her Legacy Reexamined,” Clinical Infectious Diseases (June 2005), 1800.
“Her interventions, considered at the time to be revolutionary”: Ibid., 1801.
“too old, too weak”: Julia Hallam, Nursing the Image (2000), 18.
“clear relationship between the diseases killing [her] patients”: Gill and Gill, “Nightingale in Scutari,” 1801.
“Recovery from sickness in the vast majority of cases”: Florence Night ingale, “Sites and Construction of Hospitals,” Builder (1858), 577. Also, Jeanne Kisacky, “An Architecture of Light and Air,” PhD diss., Cornell University (2000), 118–31.
“Can you fancy half a dozen or a dozen old hags”: Ira Rutkow, Bleeding Blue and Gray (2005), 170.
“uncertainty of rational judgment”: Louise Knight, Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (2008), 78.
“plain almost to repulsion in dress”: Thomas Brown, Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer (1998), 304.
“not to speak to those Catholic nurses”: Ibid., 294.
“making beds, cooking food properly for the sick”: Jane Mottus, New York Nightingales (1980), 27.
“philanthropy, patriotism”: Ibid.
“I had never been”: Elizabeth Hobson, Recollections of a Happy Life (1916), 81–84.
“nursing the sick, protecting the children”: Mottus, New York Nightingales, 46.
“We are aware”: Third Annual Report of the Visiting Committee for Bellevue and Other Public Hospitals (1875), 9.
“The nurses, or rather those employed as such”: Robert Carlisle, An Account of Bellevue Hospital (1893), 79.
“there, and solely there, to carry out the orders”: Nightingale’s “Advice to Bellevue Hospital” can be found in American Journal of Nursing (February 1911), 361–64.
“daughters and widows of clergymen”: Mottus, New York Nightingales, 44–49.
“I do not believe in the success of a training school”: Mrs. William Griffin and Mrs. William Henry Osborn, A Short History of Bellevue Hospital and the Training Schools (1915).
“slavishly afraid”: David Presswick Barr interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia Medical School Archives.
“I don’t know—ask your doctor”: Franklin North, “A New Profession for Women,” The Century (November 1882), 38–47.
“Every effort has been made”: Annual Report of the Governors of the Almshouse (1853), 19.
“His genius [had] led him to a discovery”: Sherwin Nuland, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine (1988), 239.
“Case XXXII”: Fordyce Barker, M.D., The Puerperal Fevers: Clinical Lectures Delivered at Bellevue Hospital (1874), 430–31. For a fuller listing of puerperal fever cases at Bellevue, see “First Medical Division, Cases 1866–1868, vol. 1,” Columbia Medical School Archives.
“All admit that the saturation of the air”: Barker, The Puerperal Fevers.
“Few people realize the appalling mental condition”: William T. Lusk, M.D., Clinical Report of the Lying-in Service at Bellevue Hospital (1874), 1–9.
“defective ventilation [and] construction”: State Charities Aid Association (Louisa Lee Schyler, President), “Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Take Active Measures in Regard to the Erection of a New Bellevue Hospital” (1874).
“Died on the 14th day from pyaemia”: F. J. Metcalfe, “Amputations Performed at Bellevue Hospital”; D. F. Goodwillie, “Report of Cases of Anesthesia,” both in Bellevue Hospital Reports (1869).
“PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD”: New York Times, November 23, 1884.
“Everything swam in pus”: Henry Dowling, City Hospitals (1982), 69.
“The best place to treat a sick or wounded man”: Frank Hamilton, A Treatise on Military Surgery (1865).
“Dr. Hammond [has] been disloyal to the college”: “Minutes of the College Faculty,” Bellevue Hospital Medical College (1866), Ehrman Medical Archives, NYU Medical School.
“We give you forty-eight hours”: Hobson, Recollections of a Happy Life, 106. Also, “Report of the Training School,” in Third Annual Report of the Visiting Committee (1875), 27–30.
“I can still see the wards there”: David Presswick Barr interview.
“The early prejudices, the opposition we had to contend with”: Hobson, Recollections of a Happy Life, 113.
“an incalculable benefit to [our] hospital”: Mottus, New York Nightingales, 53–57; Carlisle, An Account of Bellevue Hospital, 78–84.
“all-purpose female service workers”: Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth (1989), 12.
“When my mother became a registered nurse”: Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher (1983), 61–67.
Chapter 10: Germ Theory
“I have little fears”: Charles Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers (1987), 176.
“[You] have passed with the rank of No. 1”: C. E. A. Winslow, The Life of Hermann M. Biggs (1929), 49.
“I am undecided whose course I should take”: Haller Henkel to C. C. Henkel, March 5, 1878, H. H. Henkel Papers, New York Academy of Medicine.
“is a trick that is frequently done”: Ibid., August 19, 1878. Henkel was accepted as an intern in Bellevue’s First Surgical Division. See Robert J. Carlysle, An Account of Bellevue Hospital (1893), Appendix, 216.
“It is certainly the most completely appointed hospital”: William Welch to father, May 1875, Box 68, William Welch Papers, Chesney Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
“In 1876, the year I [first] walked the wards”: Walter Burket, Surgical Papers of William Stewart Halsted, vol. 1. (1924), xxvii. Also, “William Halsted: A Lecture by Peter Olch,” Annals of Surgery (March 2006), 421–25.
“The products of the industry”: Linda Gross and Theresa Snyder, Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition (2005).
“Comparing the aggregate results”: Joseph Lister, “On the Effect of the Antiseptic System of Treatment Upon the Salubrity of a Surgical Hospital,” The Lancet (January 1870), 4–6, 40–42.
“a picture strong men find difficult to look at”: Sheldon Nuland, “The Artist and the Doctor,” American Scholar (Winter 2003), 121–26; Patrick Grieffenstein, “Eakins’ Critics: Snapshots of Surgery on the Threshold of Modernity,” Archives of Surgery (November 2008), 1122.
“A large portion of American surgeons”: Remarks of Hamilton and dissenters in John Ashcroft, Transactions of the International Medical Congress of Philadelphia (1876), 532–34.
“renowned throughout the world”: Lister’s remarks in ibid., beginning on 535.
“movement of professional men”: Thomas Bonner, American Doctors and German Universities (1963), 23.
“You can see the original Shylocks”: William Welch to Fred Dennis, September 26, 1876, Box 12, Welch Papers.
“Don’t be alarmed”: Welch to sister, September 26, 1876, in ibid.
“You must go to [Leipzig]”: Welch to Dennis, March 30, 1877, in ibid.
“We’ve got to get you back”: Simon Flexner and Thomas Flexner, William Henry Welch and the Age of Heroic Medicine (1941), 116.
“I felt I would be a traitor”: Victor Freeburg, William Henry Welch at Eighty: A Memorial Record (1930), 69–70.
“People say there are bacteria in the air”: Donald Fleming, William H. Welch and the Rise of Modern Medicine, 72.
“We may summarize the conditions”: Stephe
n Smith, “The Comparative Results of Operations in Bellevue Hospital,” Medical Record (1885), 427–31. Also, Smith, “Reminiscences of Two Epochs—Anesthesia an Asepsis,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1919), 273–78.
“There’s a bacillus, catch him!”: Peter Olch, “William Halsted’s New York Period,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1966), 503.
“where the numerous anti-Lister surgeons”: Howard Markel, An Anatomy of Addiction (2012), 95.
“Pasteur has demonstrated that 212 degrees”: H. H. Henkel, Student Notebook, New York Academy of Medicine.
“The floor was of maple”: “William Halsted: A Lecture by Peter Olch.” Also, Howard Markel, An Anatomy of Addiction (2011), 94–95.
Chapter 11: A Tale of Two Presidents
“Doctor, I am a dead man”: Ira Rutkow, James A. Garfield (2006), 2–3.
“The President, while doing well”: Telegram, Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Dr. Hamilton, July 3, 1881, Frank H. Hamilton Papers, Box 1, Library of Congress.
“the ball seems to have entered the liver”: New York Times, July 13, 1881.
“From this moment until the death of the President”: Hamilton Affidavit, Box 1, Frank H. Hamilton Papers.
“the country’s first air conditioner”: Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic (2011), 178.
“The President is now in much greater danger”: Ira Rutkow, “Dirty Nation,” unpublished manuscript in author’s possession.
“I regard his case as making good progress”: New York Times, August 1, 2, 3, 1881.
“I have had a great deal of experience”: Ibid., August 3, 1881.
“it does not give a happy impression”: New York World, July 26, 1881.
“The case could not possibly be progressing more favorably”: New York Times, July 13, 1881.
“The President’s Best Day”: Ibid., September 9, 1881.
“his ribs stuck out”: Ira Rutkow, Seeking the Cure (2010), 78.
“between the loin muscles and the right kidney”: “Official Bulletin of the Autopsy of the Body of the President,” September 20, 1881.
“We might criticize the introduction of the finger”: John Collins Warren, “The Case of President Garfield,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1881), 464.
“The collision of opinion”: New York Herald Tribune, September 25, 1881.
“If Garfield had been a ‘tough’ ”: John Girdner, “The Death of President Garfield,” Munsey’s Magazine (October 1902), 547.
“Nothing could be more absurd”: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (February 16, 1882), 150.
“For professional services”: All material relating to Hamilton’s bill for services can be found in Box 1, Frank H. Hamilton Papers.
“To younger practitioners”: “Eulogy Delivered Before the New York State Medical Association of Professor Frank Hastings Hamilton” (November 1886), copy on file at the National Library of Medicine.
“The main dish was country ham”: H. L. Mencken, Chrestomathy (1982), 372–74.
“I shall make the leading features”: Flexner and Flexner, William Henry Welch, 114–18.
“The [germ] theory, which has so recently occupied medical men”: Ibid., 119.
“What are we aiming for?”: “Gilman’s Inaugural Address,” Johns Hopkins University, https://www.jhu.edu/gilman-address; Gerald Imber, Genius on the Edge (2010), 59–73.
“Mr. Gilman is looking out for men”: Welch to father, January 3, 1876, Box 57, William Welch Papers.
“a gentleman in every sense”: John Shaw Billings to Gilman, March 1, 1884, Box 57, William Welch Papers.
“You must come”: Gilman to Welch, March 15, 1884, Box 57, William Welch Papers.
“I do not feel as if [I’m] accomplishing what I want to do”: Welch to father, March 26, 31, 1884, Box 68, William Welch Papers.
“the drudgery of teaching”: Flexner and Flexner, William Henry Welch and the Age of Heroic Medicine, 130–31.
“Willie Welch came to see me”: All correspondence between Dennis and Welch is found in William Welch Papers, Box 12.
“Gentlemen, Please pay drafts”: Carnegie’s telegram is in “Papers of Bellevue Hospital,” New York Academy of Medicine.
“In Germany, [such] facilities are amply provided by the Government”: New York Times, April 27, 1884.
“His ideas imbibed in Germany are impractical”: Donald Fleming, William H. Welch and the Rise of Modern Medicine (1954), 68.
“I shall resign my position”: Loomis to Welch, December 30, 1884, Loomis Folder, William Welch Papers.
“I am conscious that I have acted throughout in good faith”: Welch to Dennis, September 27, 1884, Dennis Folder, William Welch Papers.
“Well, good-bye”: Flexner and Flexner, William Henry Welch and the Age of Heroic Medicine, 134.
“the most vigorous period of his life”: Allen Dumont, “Halsted at Bellevue, 1883–1887,” Annals of Surgery (December 1970), 929–35.
“arm thoroughly cleansed and disinfected”: “Record Book of Bellevue Hospital, 1883–1887,” Ehrman Medical Archives, NYU Medical School.
“A body of gentlemen in this city”: Peter Olch, “William S. Halsted’s New York Period,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1966), 498–510; Olch, “William Halsted and Local Anesthesia,” Anesthesiology (1975), 479–86.
“from a model of patrician rectitude”: Gerald Imber, Genius on the Edge (2010), 58.
“a life of controlled addiction…As long as he lived”: Markel, Anatomy of Addiction, 241.
“The surgeon scrubs his forearms”: Frederic Dennis, “Report of Two Months Service at Bellevue Hospital,” Medical and Surgical Reports of Bellevue and Allied Hospitals (1907–8).
“ulcerative lesion”: Dr. W. W. Keen, “The Surgical Operations on President Cleveland in 1893,” Saturday Evening Post, September 22, 1917; Matthew Algeo, The President Is a Sick Man (2012), 53–88.
“So careful were we”: Saturday Evening Post, September 22, 1917.
“Fresh, pure air, disinfected quarters”: “President Cleveland’s Secret Operation,” The American Surgeon (August 1997), 758–59; Arlene Shaner, “The Secret Surgeries of Grover Cleveland,” Monthly Archive (February 2014), New York Academy of Medicine; “Final Diagnosis of President Cleveland’s Lesion,” JAMA (December 19, 1980).
Chapter 12: The Mad-House
“for the poorest of the poor”: W. H. Rideing, “Hospital Life in New York,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (June 1878), 171–89.
“explaining the cases and operations”: Ibid.
“cost-per-patient-per day”: Henry Dowling, City Hospitals (1982), 77.
“It is a mighty dry place”: New York Times, May 14, 1867.
“The invalid, the aged, the infirm”: Grand Jury Report: “An Address to the Citizens of New York: Abuses and Reforms of the Alms-House and Prison Department” (1849), New-York Historical Society (NYHS).
“a rapid and violent current”: Blackwell Family Scrapbook, March 8, 1784; Samuel Mitchell Note on Blackwell’s Island, October 20, 1796, NYHS.
“The moping idiot”: Charles Dickens, American Notes, vol. 4 (1842).
“I had the honor of stroking the back”: “A Visit to the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (March 19, 1859). Also, “Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,” in ibid.; and Elizabeth Montgomery, A Separated Place (1988), privately published, NYHS.
“planting vegetables”: “Report of the Resident Physician, Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum” (1863–73), NYHS.
“FRENCH SCIENTIST AND EXPLORER”: Denis Brian, Pulitzer: A Life (2002), 67.
“We must raise the money”: National Park Service, “Statue of Liberty: Joseph Pulitzer,” www.nps.gov/joseph-pulitzer.htm.
“have [me] committed to one of the asylums”: Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (1995), 91–92.
“practicing to be a lunatic”: Nellie Bly, Ten Days in a Mad-House (1
887), 5–9.
“Who Is This Insane Girl?”: New York Sun, September 26, 1887.
“A Mysterious Waif”: New York Times, September 26, 1887.
“the third station on my way to the island…I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors”: Bly, Ten Days in a Mad-House.
“this girl of whom nothing is known”: Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 91–92.
“BEHIND ASYLUM BARS”: New York World, October 9, 16, 1887.
“She thoroughly understands the profession”: Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 91–92.
“I had hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me”: Ibid., 97–99.
“I have one consolation”: Ibid.
“Imagines Himself a Mosquito” and all following headlines: “Bellevue Maniacs,” Robertson Portfolio, Scrapbook Clippings (1897), New York Academy of Medicine.
“SHOCKING BRUTALITY OF MALE NURSES”: New York World, December 15, 1900.
“No writer of fiction”: New York Times, December 28, 1900, February 15, 19, 1901.
“The Case of the Garroted Frenchman”: Page Cooper, The Bellevue Story (1948), 155.
“in a lunatic asylum”: New York Times, February 16, 1901.
“Why did you go to Bellevue?”: Ibid.
“That’s a personal matter”: Ibid.
“sense of chastity”: Jane Mottus, New York Nightingales (1980), 71.
“too nervous”: Ibid., 106–7.
A master of cross-examination: For the cross-examination of Minnock, see Francis Lewis Wellman, The Art of Cross-Examination (1903), Chapter 15.
“unnatural advances and acts”: Sandra Opdycke, “Improper Conduct: Rumors, Accusations, and the Closing of the Bellevue Training School for Male Nurses” (n.d.), unpublished paper in author’s possession.
“The details of the investigation”: Ibid.
“Nursing is essentially a woman’s work”: Ibid.
“The average man does not select the profession of a nurse”: Ibid.
“the care of alcoholics”: Ibid.
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