2023 Presidential Gala and Silent Auction

We are very excited for the inaguration of the incoming MedChi President, Dr. James York which will take place on Saturday, April 22 at the Hilton BWI Airport Hotel.

As part of the Gala, the Center for a Healthy Maryland will be presenting a silent auction to benefit our Maryland Physician Health Program. We hope that each and every MedChi member will participate in this fun event either by donating an item for the Silent Auction, purchasing an item at the auction or purchasing tickets to the Presidential Gala.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to demonstrate your support of the Center for a Healthy Maryland and the Maryland Physician Health Program. 

You will receive acknowledgement of your participation in the Silent Auction in the Monday Mailing sent to more than 8,000 physicians in Maryland and of course, at the event. We will also highlight your participation on signage, as well as in the event program. We anticipate more than 200 of our members and friends, representing every county in Maryland, as well as Baltimore City and Washington, D.C., will attend the Presidential Gala.

If you would like to donate an item to the Silent Auction, please fill out this form and email it to Meg Fielding. We will be happy to discuss your contribution. Funds raised through the Silent Auction will be used to support the Maryland Physician Health Program, which is celebrating its 45th Anniversary this year, and are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.  

Save the Date for Our Upcoming BSO Event

On Saturday, May 13, we will be partnering with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) to host dinner and a show, Uptown Nights! 

More details to follow.

New Acquisitions on the History of Blacks and Medicine

As I have been going through the 23 cases of books which we recently re-acquired from the Maryland Center for History and Culture, I found some books on the history of Blacks and medicine. Please excuse the poor quality of the photos.

The first one I discovered was "The First Negro Medical Society: The History of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Washington, D.C." which was active from 1884-1939. It was written by W. Montague Cobb, A.B., M.D., PhD., who was a professor of anatomy at Washington DC's Howard University, and was written in 1939. 

Here is the list of chapters which wend their way through the history of the organization.

The second book is "A Century of Black Surgeons, Vol. II." I haven't come across Vol. I yet, but I am hoping that I do. 

This book was published in 1987, and is a series of stories about people and institutions. Here's a sample:

You will see on this list Mr. Vivien Thomas, who assisted Dr. Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins. 

Next up is "Negros for Medicine: A Report of a Macy Conference." It was published in 1968 in Baltimore by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Here is a list of the participants in the conference, which was held in June of 1967.

Finally, there is the book, "Germs Have No Color Line: Blacks and American Medicine, 1900-1940." This was published in 1989 by Vanessa Northington Gamble. This looks to be a series of articles taken from various medical journals over the years. 

If you would like to see any of these books, please email me and we can set up an appointment for you to visit.   

The Saturday Night Club - A Personal Perspective

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I found a cache of letters between "the sage of Baltimore" H.L. Mencken and Max Brödel, the first non-physician member of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. 

Mencken and Brödel founded the "The Saturday Night Club" an informal group of doctors, lawyers, teachers, musicians, artists, writers and businessmen who were interested in friendship, music, conversation and good food and good beer (even during Prohibition). The above photo is probably from Mencken's house, either on Union Square or on Cathedral Street. 

Brödel's daughter, Elsa, who was about 16 in 1927, wrote a personal essay for an assignment for Baltimore's all-girl Bryn Mawr School. It is an incredibly mature and insightful look at at Elsa's parents and their friends. She describes the household getting ready to host the evening at their house on Suffolk Road in Guilford, the arrival of the guests, and finally, her thoughts on each of the guests. 

I scanned the relevant essay and the sketch above, which were published in "Max Brödel: The Man Who Put Art into Medicine," written by Ranice W. Crosby and John Cody and published in 1991 by Springer-Verlag, New York. 

Provident Hospital, Baltimore's First Black Hospital

Provident Hospital and Free Dispensary was founded in 1894 at 419 Orchard Street, a neighborhood where several hospitals serving the white population were already located. At that time, admitting black patients to white hospitals was basically prohibited. Black patients still needed care and treatment, so a small group of doctors started Provident Hospital. 

The founders included Dr. William T. Carr, Sr. (above) and Dr. J. Marcus Cargill. They wanted to provide an institution where people of color could be attended by physicians of their own race, and that colored physicians might have an opportunity to develop themselves in their specialties and become proficient in them. They also wanted to establish a well-organized training school for nurses. 

Among the early physicians at Provident were three Black physicians who were admitted as members of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in the 1880s, when the organization’s by-laws had changed members from “gentlemen” to “persons.” The first admitted was Whitfield Winsey, M.D. who became a pupil of Dr. John R.W. Dunbar, a professor of surgery at Washington University and received his medical degree from Harvard in 1877. Next was Reveredy M. Hall, M.D. a Baltimorean who graduated from Howard as a medical doctor in 1872 and was dean and director of Provident Hospital. The third was William H. Thompson, who was born in Yonkers, NY in 1849 and received his doctorate degree at Howard University in 1872.

The hospital soon outgrew its home on Orchard Street and in 1896, the hospital moved to 413 W. Biddle Street, where there was room for 30 beds and an adjoining building for the nurses’ training school.

The Provident Training School for Nurses was the first and only institution in the are to offer Black women the opportunity to train as nurses. The school received official recognition in 1926 and was renamed the Provident Hospital School of Nursing.

Over the years, Provident Hospital went through highs and lows. When Union Memorial Hospital moved to its current location on 33rd Street, Dr. J.M.T. Finney suggested that Provident buy the building on Division Street for $75,000. The new building opened on October 15, 1928 with Dr. William T. Carr as superintendent. Sixteen Black physicians were appointed to the visiting staff and had privileges to treat private patients.

The AMA approved a plan to train six interns in a general rotating program. There were residencies in pediatrics, general surgery and anatomic pathology. Provident was one of five hospitals in the United States that provided specialty training for Black physicians.

Provident stayed at the Division Street location until the late 1960s when construction commenced on a building on Liberty Heights Avenue, and was occupied in 1970. By the mid-1970s, the hospital’s main concern was the integration of Black physicians and patients into previously all-White hospitals which siphoned potential patients from Provident Hospital. In addition to the financial de-stability this caused, the hospital was surrounded by low-income neighborhoods.

Not all news was bad, as surgical and obstetrical residents and summer students rotated though Provident from Meharry Medical College. A hypertension program with numerous outreach facilities was assisted by a significant grant-in-aid. And a cancer-screening clinic, funded by the Morris Goldseker Foundation was entirely free for participants.

In 1985, a low occupancy rate along with financial difficulties, including poor cash flow led to the closing of the hospital. But in 1986 the hospital merged with Lutheran Hospital and formed Liberty Medical Center.

Lutheran Hospital began in the 1870s in West Baltimore as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

In the 1920s, when the Hebrew Orphan Asylum moved to where Sinai Hospital is now located, the hospital became West Baltimore General Hospital. By 1939, the hospital contained 100 beds, a nurses’ quarters, maternity wing and power plant. After World War II, it became Lutheran Home and Hospital.

In the 1990s, a partnership with Bon Secours Hospital, Liberty and other community-based health centers was formed to become the Community HealthCare Network of Baltimore. As medical care changed, and fewer and fewer patients actually stayed at hospitals for any signficant amount of time, Liberty Medical only had a 10-15% occupancy rate, not enough to keep the doors open.

In August of 1999, Liberty Medical Center, which had 282 beds and employed about 400 people on the 15-acre campus on Liberty Heights Avenue, closed. From a small hospital that began in a row-house in 1894 to large urban medical center, Provident’s history for caring for the Black population of Baltimore has not been forgotten.

Sources:
Maryland Medical Journal, April 1997
Journal of the National Medical Association, May 1967
Baltimore Sun, August 8, 1999

Lecture and Book Signing OCME: Life in America's Top Forensic Medical Center by Bruce Goldfarb

Our friend, Bruce Goldfarb, who has given several lectures for us on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, will be giving a lecture and book signing for his new book, OCME: Life in America's Top Forensic Medical Center. 

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, March 1, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the historic Osler Hall at MedChi. 

Please RSVP here by February 25th.