Chapter 13: The New Metropolis
“COST OF NEW BELLEVUE”: New York Times, April 23, 1904.
“surgical use”: Report of the Proposed Bellevue Hospital, Box 42, Bellevue, Papers of McKim, Mead & White, New-York Historical Society (NYHS).
“the public inspection of the unidentified dead”: Though most of the concrete plans for the new Bellevue are located in the McKim, Mead & White Papers, preliminary designs of Bellevue can also be found in the firm’s collection in the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University. See, especially, “Bellevue Hospital: New Hospital Buildings and Modernization of Existing Buildings…Preliminary Drawings.”
“Dear Charlie”: Stanford White to Charles McKim, May 12, 1904, McKim, Mead & White Papers, Box 147, NYHS.
“Dear Stanford”: McKim to White, May 14, 1904, in ibid.
“Grand Jury Denounces Bellevue Management”: New York Times, February 1, 1901.
“I think we have a conclusive responsibility”: James A. Miller to George O’Hanlon, February 10, 1906, Dean’s Files, Archives and Manuscripts, Health Services Library, Columbia University.
“I wish to cite the example”: C. E. A. Winslow, The Life of Hermann M. Biggs (1929), 216–19.
“There was no attempt to give instruction”: William Rom and Joan Reibner, “The History of the Bellevue Chest Service,” Annals of the American Thoracic Society (October 2015), 1439.
“Doctors stripped [one] man”: Edward Kohn, Hot Time in the Old Town (2010), 89–90.
“He dived overboard”: New York Times, December 14, 1946.
“less pretentious”: Memos in Box 147, McKim, Mead & White Papers, NYHS.
“OMIT DOME”: “Bellevue Hospital, REDUCTIONS,” May 10, 1904, in ibid.
“It is my opinion”: George Shady, “New Bellevue Hospital Plans Filed,” Medical Record, vol. 71, 273. Also, Arthur Dillon, “The New Bellevue Hospital,” House and Garden (June 1904), 296–99.
“It seems a great deal more money”: New York Times, November 29, 1907.
“fair students, better than the Irish”: Kate Holliday, “The Foreign Immigrant in New York City,” Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. 15 (1901), 465–92.
“show a depressing frequency of low foreheads”: Alan Kraut, Silent Travelers (1994), 109.
Bellevue naturally mirrored: Bellevue nativity statistics are compiled from Annual Report of the Commission of Public Charities (1875–93) and Bellevue and Annual Hospital Reports (1902–13).
“mandatorily excludible”: Report of the Committee on Inquiry into the Department of Health, Charities, and Bellevue and Allied Hospitals (1913), 22.
“The opinion is prevalent”: New York Times, November 8, 1891.
“In the philanthropic institutions”: Paul Starr, The Transformation of American Medicine (1982), 174.
The 1890s had seen a sprinkling: For Bellevue case files, see “Record Books, First Surgical Division, Bellevue Hospital, 1898”; “First Surgical Children’s Division, Bellevue Hospital, 1911–1915,” both in Archives and Special Collections, Health Studies Library, Columbia University.
“had a beneficial influence”: E. H. Lewinski-Corwin, The Hospital Situation in Greater New York (1924), 18, 43.
“Today the patient approaches”: Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth (1989), 30.
“a hotel for rich invalids”: New York Times, January 26, 1904.
“we ask, ‘Is it right?’ ”: David Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise (1982), 66.
“Why is it that when our patients enter a hospital”: Ibid., 102.
Among the many examples was Mount Sinai: On the drop in charity patients at Mount Sinai, see Alan Herman, “Institutional Practices in Jewish Hospitals of New York City: 1880–1930,” PhD diss., NYU (1984), 72–73.
“FACTORIES FOR THE MAKING”: The New York Times, July 24, 1910.
“The schools skate on thin ice”: Abraham Flexner, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910), 275–77.
“On one day, 25 pounds of porterhouse steak”: Report of the Committee on Inquiry into the Department of Health, Charities, and Bellevue and Allied Hospitals, 83.
“inexperienced in the diagnosing of disease”: Ibid., 367.
“Financially the position would demand considerable sacrifice”: E. H. Poole to Dr. Brewer (included in a letter to Dr. Lambert, Dean of Columbia Medical School, March 13, 1916), Dean’s Files, Box 317, Health Studies Library, Columbia University.
“rats of heroic East River dimension”: John Starr, Hospital City (1957), 198.
“My choices were extremely limited”: Dr. Connie Guion Interview, Columbia Oral History Project (COHP), Health Studies Library.
“Her services will have no cause for regret”: See, for example, letters of recommendation in Leoni Clarman Papers, Box 1, Health Services Library, Columbia University.
“In plain English, he was outclassed”: Sandra Opdycke, No One Was Turned Away (1999), 67.
“very, very dark”: May Chinn Interview, COHP.
“Dr. Giles is one of us”: Journal of the National Medical Association (May 1939), 122.
“Days later, when I was well enough to talk”: Clayborne Carson, ed., “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (2001), 118.
“We have honestly attempted to eliminate”: Michael Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Nicholas Murray Butler (2015), 343.
“radical”: Harold Wechsler, The Qualified Student: A History of Selective Admission in America (1977), 161–62.
“Never admit more than five Jews”: Gerard Burrow, A History of Yale’s School of Medicine (2008), 107.
“went begging for nine years”: Leon Sokoloff, “The Rise and Decline of the Jewish Quota in Medical School Admissions,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine (November 1992), 497–518. Also, Edward Halperin, “Jews in U.S. Medical Education,” Journal of the History of Medicine (April 2001), 140–67.
“the personal side of the man”: John Wycoff, “Relation of Collegiate to Medical School Scholarship,” Bulletin of the Association of Medical Colleges (January 1927), 1–16.
“standing in the middle third of his class”: For a description of the candidates, see Charles Flood to Dr. John McCreery, “Applicants for First Surgical Division at Bellevue: Group One—Preferred,” Dean’s Papers, Box 247, Health Services Library, Columbia University.
“for a chat, during which he defended the fact”: Dr. Joseph Dancis Interview, Archives of the American Academy of Pediatrics (1996).
“It gathers the dead and dying”: Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook (2010), 17.
“This must be some kind of new infection”: Gina Kolata, Flu (1999), 17.
“High temperature, short of breath”: Dr. Connie Guion Interview, COHP.
“promiscuous coughing and sneezing”: Francesco Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City,” Public Health Reports (Supplement Three, 2010), 71–79.
“It got to the place where I would only see the patients twice”: Guion Interview.
“Doc, what do you think”: Ibid.
“Our final conclusion is”: Wade Oliver, The Man Who Lived for Tomorrow (1941), 392–99.
“a chastening experience”: Winslow, Hermann Biggs, 321.
Chapter 14: Cause of Death
“The American does not realize”: Walter George, Hail Columbia: Random Impressions of a Conservative English Radical (1921), 154.
“city on a still”: Michael Lerner, Dry Manhattan (2007), 4
“favoritism, extortion, and malfeasance”: Leonard Wallstein, Report on the Special Examination of the Accounts and Methods of the Office of Coroner in the City of New York (1915).
“eight undertakers, seven politicians”: Ibid. Also, Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook (2010), 20.
“skilled pathologists [holding] the degree of M.D.”: William Eckert, “Medicolegal Investigation in New York City,” Forensic Medicine and Pathology (March 1983), 33–54.
/> “We have had all the reform”: Francis Barry, The Scandal of Reform (2009), 82.
“the greatest activity resided”: Edward Marten, The Doctor Looks at Murder (1940), 43–47.
“from criminal violence, or suicide”: “An Act to Amend the Greater Charter of New York City,” New York State Journal of Medicine (February 1903), 464.
“It would be imprecise”: Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook, 29.
“All new equipment purchased in 1921”: Ibid., 53.
“spike it with the substance involved”: Henry Freimuth, “Alexander O. Gettler,” American Journal of Forensic Medicine (December 1983), 304–5.
“staggered about the laboratory”: Eugene Pawley, “Cause of Death: Ask Gettler,” American Mercury (September 1954), 62–66.
“they oxidized it at a faster rate”: Ibid.
“TOO OLD TO CARE FOR PETS”: New York Sun and Herald, May 24, 1920.
“set forth the true facts”: “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, June 1, 1920.
“Test-Tube Sleuth”: Time (May 15, 1933), 24.
“The Man Who Reads Corpses”: Harper’s Magazine (February 1, 1955), 62–67.
“sent more criminals to the electric chair”: S. K. Niyogi, “Historical Developments of Forensic Medicine in America Up to 1978,” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology (September 1980), 255.
“radium girls”: William Sharpe, “The New Jersey Radium Dial Painters,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Winter 1978), 560–70.
“WILLMOTT ASHES IN POISON TEST”: New York Times, September 13, 1934.
“I recall that one victim”: “The Memoirs of Dr. DeWitt Stetten, Jr.,” unpublished manuscript in author’s possession.
“up slightly after a post-holiday drop”: “The Liquor Market,” The New Yorker (January 16, 1926), 7.
“makes men talk nutty and climb trees”: Ibid.
“23 DEATHS HERE LAID TO HOLIDAY DRINKING”: New York Times, December 28, 1926.
“The mortality rate from this cause”: For a transcript of the Norris Report and a summary, see New York Times, February 6, 1927.
“No one having good wines”: Ibid.
“It is common knowledge”: Ibid.
“We almost never see now a pile of furniture,” Philip Weiss, Unsung Heroes: The Story of the Bellevue Hospital Social Work Department (2005), 24.
“16 KILLED IN 4 DAYS”: New York Times, July 31, 1932.
Chapter 15: The Shocking Truth
“seemed to be New York”: Mason Williams, City of Ambition (2013), 81.
“During his first two years in office”: Edward Ellis, The Epic of New York City (1966), 526.
“That’s cheap!”: Ibid.
“despairing persons of both sexes”: Dr. Alexander Thomas, “History of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital” (1982), unpublished manuscript, Lapidus Medical Library, NYU.
“Is it strange that the average”: Menas S. Gregory, “Reception Hospitals, Psychopathic Wards, and Psychopathic Hospitals,” presented to the American Medico-Psychological Association, 1907, copy in author’s possession.
“LUNATIC WITH A PISTOL”: New York Times, September 16, 17, 1925.
“I wouldn’t send my dog there”: Ibid., June 10, 1926.
“It was a big graft job”: “Dr. Joseph Wortis, Recollections, told to Leo Hollister,” December 14, 1994, copy in author’s possession.
“cinquecento porticoes”: Gerald Weissmann, “Bellevue: Form Follows Function,” Hospital Practice (August 1981), 18.
“first-time charity recipients”…“the new poor”: Williams, City of Ambition, 92.
“For many New Yorkers”: Sandra Opdycke, No One Was Turned Away (1999), 73.
“is indeed a gigantic factory”: Ibid, 77.
“There was a time when people”: New York Times, September 12, 1940.
“They treated me first-rate”: “A Reporter in Bed: Bellevue Days,” The New Yorker (October 14, 1950), 104–5.
“at least 20 life-saving appointments”: Gerald Weissmann, “Einstein’s Letter to the Dean: Welcome to America,” Federation of American Scientists for Experimental Biology (December 2015), 4761.
“overstimulation”: Robert Kohn et al., “Affective Disorders Among Jews: A Historical Review and Meta-Analysis,” History of Psychiatry (1999), 245–67.
“We expect a continuous growth”: P. P. Yeung and S. Greenwald, “Jewish Americans and Mental Health,” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (1992), 292–99; B. Malzberg, “Mental Illness Among Jews,” Mental Hygiene (1930), 926–46.
“a niece of the former Commissioner Donahue”: “Gross Defects in the Management of the Psychopathic Division of Bellevue Hospital” (1934), Box 22, Lauretta Bender Papers, Brooklyn College Archives.
“failure to adequately encourage”: Ibid.
“Mean Ass Gregory”: Interview with Dr. Arthur Zitrin.
“We rarely saw him”: Arthur Zitrin, “The Greatest Little Man in the World,” unpublished paper in author’s possession.
“She was screaming”: Dr. Emanuel Kotsos to Dr. Gregory, September 17, 1932 (copy in author’s possession).
“The alliance between the director”: New York Herald Tribune, June 27, 1934; New York Times, June 27, 1934.
“Almost overnight, residents, junior physicians”: Walter Bromberg, Psychiatry Between the Wars (1982), 108–9.
“the swiftest trial of a sensational murder case”: New York Times, May 28, 1916.
“Court Orders Delay”: Ibid., July 20, 1933.
“Dr. Gregory Finds”: Ibid., December 2, 1925.
“First I stripped her naked”: Katherine Ramsland, The Devil’s Dozen (2009), 71.
“Oh, you’ll hear plenty about Bellevue”: New York Times, March 12, 13, 1935.
“Yes, Bellevue has a lot to answer for”: Ibid.
“not voluminous…not an insane person”: Ibid., March 22, 1935.
“I always had a desire to inflict pain”: Colin Wilson, The Serial Killers (2011), 171; New York Times, March 20, 22, 1935.
“However you define the medical and legal borders”: Katherine Ramsland, The Mind of a Murderer (2011), 47. Also, Fredric Wertham: The Show of Violence (1949).
“a psychopathic personality without a psychosis”: New York Times, March 20, 22, 1935; “Albert Fish Case, 1935: The M’Naghten Rule,” Bloomberg Law (n.d.).
“DR. GREGORY DIES ON GOLF LINKS”: New York Times, November 3, 1941.
“It was extraordinary”: Bromberg, Psychiatry Between the Wars, 85.
“with books piled to eye level”: Ibid.
“She may not have been home”: Peter Schilder, “My Family,” unpublished paper, Box 22, Lauretta Bender Papers. The college professor who graded the paper gave it a C+. “I don’t think you know yourself or your mother very well,” he wrote.
“She loved her infants as infants”: Lauretta Bender, “Autobiography,” unpublished, Lauretta Bender Papers.
“I doubt that I would have graduated”: Ibid.
“I knew immediately”: Ibid.
“They flock to [us] by the dozen”: Joseph Wortis, “Observations of a Psychiatric Intern,” in Correspondence, Joseph Wortis Unit 1/4112, Adolph Meyer Papers, Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins.
“two features which almost anyone will concede”: Dennis Doyle, “Racial Differences Have to Be Considered: Lauretta Bender, Bellevue Hospital, and the African-American Psyche,” History of Psychiatry (2010), 206–23.
“It was almost a pleasure”: Wortis, “Observations of a Psychiatric Intern.”
“hairline”: Edward Shorter and David Healy, Shock Therapy (2007), 60–66.
“It is not simply a shock”: Joseph Wortis, “Remarks Before the New York Neurological Association,” Box 8, Joseph Wortis Papers, Psychiatric Archives, Cornell-Weill Medical Center, NYC.
“Our insulin wards now have 26 beds”: Joseph Wortis to Kingsley Porter, April 20, 1937, Box 10, in ibid.
“I don’t feel confused”: Joseph Wortis, “Experience
at Bellevue with Hypoglycemic Treatment of Psychosis,” Adolph Meyer Papers, Wortis Unit 1/4112.
“We can afford to wait”: Ibid.
“[Our unit] is now pushing electro-shock”: Joseph Wortis to Harold Himwich, October 21, 1940, Box 8, Joseph Wortis Papers.
“could damage the nervous system”: Shorter and Healy, Shock Therapy, 32–37.
“Place a generous amount of electrode jelly”: “Instructions for Electro-Shock Apparatus,” Box 20, Joseph Wortis Papers.
“If you were confronted by the cross-section”: Adam Feinstein, A History of Autism: Conversations with Pioneers (2010), 44–47.
“organic brain disorders”: Bender, “Notes on Children’s Ward,” Box 22, Lauretta Bender Papers.
“juvenile delinquency”: Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), 264–71.
“We have too many feeble-minded among us”: Foster Kennedy, “The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective,” American Journal of Psychiatry (July 1942), 14.
“the essential schizophrenic process”: Lauretta Bender, “One Hundred Cases of Schizophrenia Treated with Electric Shock,” Transactions of the American Neurological Society (June 1947), 165–69.
“clearly related the [shocks] to sexual intercourse”: Ibid. Also, Austin Des Lauriers, “Psychological Tests in Childhood Schizophrenia,” American Psychological Society, Annual Meeting (1947), 57–67.
“were temporary and resulted in no sustained improvement”: E. R. Clardy and Elizabeth Rumpf, “The Effect of Electric Shock Treatment on Children Having Schizophrenic Manifestations,” Psychiatric Quarterly (1954), 616–23.
“all other measures have failed”: Ibid.
“I have never seen one single instance”: Feinstein, History of Autism, 44–47.
“I think they destroyed him”: Barbara Seaman, Lucky Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann (1996), 211–14.
“afraid of dying”: Clardy and Rumpf, “The Effect of Electric Shock Treatment on Children Having Schizophrenic Manifestations,” 621–23.
“I don’t think they did me much good”: Ibid.
“On the mornings when I was going to get the shock treatment”: Ted Chabasinski, “A Child on the Shock Ward,” Mad in America (July 17, 2012), http://madinamerica.com.
“Sometimes she would pass very close”: Ibid.
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