Wooden German Doctors

One of our generous donors gave us a set of hand-carved wooden German physicians. 

Each figure has a hand-written description of what type of doctor the figure represents, and some of the tools of the trade. Below is an ophthalmologist in one of our display shelves with some early 20th century ophthalmology tools.

The figures are displayed in our Krause Room, and are in shelves with some of our historic German medical books. In the image below, you can see on the left side, the figure in the rust apron and his specialty is listed as "chirurg" and behind him, a German book on surgery.

The next time you're in the building, stop by and take a look at them. They are so charming!

The figures are from the collection of Dr. John H. Talbott, Sr. who was among other things, the Editor of JAMA and a very important researcher on topics (during WWII) such as climate and its effects on soldiers, and later he was among those researchers who discovered colchicine, the first effective treatment for Gout. 

From Dr. Talbott's obituary in the New York Times on October 13, 1990:

Dr. John Harold Talbott, Sr. a researcher, educator and author, died Wednesday at a care community where he lived in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 88 years old and died of lymphoma, said his son, Dr. John A. Talbott of Baltimore.

Dr. Talbott wrote 12 books and hundreds of articles and was former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and the former director of scientific publications of the American Medical Association. He was also an editor of the Merck Manual and of his own journal, ''Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism.''

A 1929 graduate of Harvard University Medical School, Dr. Talbott did his internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. From 1930 to 1940 he was affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. In these years, he worked for the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, where he did research on the physiological effects of exposure to high altitudes. He also did research on gout and arthritis.

In World War II, he was director of the Army Climatic Research Laboratories in Lawrence, Mass., where he studied environmental stress on soldiers produced by exposure to extreme temperatures.

He then spent 13 years at the University of Buffalo Medical School and at Buffalo General Hospital as a professor and chief of medicine. In 1959 he was named editor of the A.M.A. journal and remained there for 12 years. As editor, he was criticized by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for issuing warnings on possible cancer-causing effects of smoking or food additives, calling them premature or without sufficient evidence. In 1971 he moved to Florida to serve as a professor of medicine at the University of Miami.

We are so delighted to have these wonderful figures as part of our collection!

Early Black Physicians in Maryland

The history of Black physicians in Maryland is long, but sadly, virtually un-explored.

One of the earliest reports of a Black physician practicing in Maryland dates from 1750. Henry Game, a freed slave in Somerset County on the Eastern Shore, was praised in the October 1750 issue of the Maryland Gazette as a successful doctor. He is also mentioned as a doctor in the register of the Stepney Parish in Somerset County in 1751.

Fast forward to 1818, when two men of color, Drs. Marlborough and Gibson were mentioned as practicing medicine without a license on the Eastern Shore.

In 1832, Dr. Lewis G. Wells was reputed to have attended the now-defunct Washington Medical College in Baltimore.

According to contemporary reports, it was likely that he studied at the university while working as an employee there, and reports also mention that he was one most skillful physicians of the day. He was Baltimore’s only Black physician at the time.

During the cholera epidemic in 1832, he was seen riding up and down the streets of Baltimore, administering to the sick and dying.

Samuel Ford McGill was the first Liberian colonist to receive a medical education in the United States. He also studied at Washington University, in 1836, but he was dismissed due to pressure from white students. He eventually attended Dartmouth University, where he graduated with a medical degree.

He returned to Liberia and became a colonial governor.

In 1882, the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty admitted its first Black member, Whitfield Winsey.

Dr. John Dunbar tutored Dr. Winsey in medicine, and in 1871, Winsey graduated from Harvard Medical School.

He returned to Baltimore and established a private practice on East Fayette Street. In April 1882, Dr. Winsey applied to the Baltimore City Medical & Surgical Society, but his membership was denied. Later that month, Dr. Winsey became the first Black member of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty.

In 1894, Dr. Winsey, along with a group of prominent Black physicians, founded Provident Hospital on Orchard Street, the first private teaching hospital for Blacks in Baltimore.

Although Winsey was employed as a physician at Black institutions such as the Melvale Home for Colored Girls and Provident Hospital, he belonged to white fraternal and professional organizations, including the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty and the Masons. Dr. Winsey provided leadership for many aspects of nineteenth-century Black society in Baltimore.

The second Black member of the Faculty was Dr. Reverdy M. Hall, who became a member in 1884. He attended Howard University’s Medical College and graduated in 1872.

He opened a private practice on Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore. There is some evidence that Dr. Hall was an OB/GYN, and he published a lengthy article in the Faculty’s 1890 Transactions, entitled “Fibroid Tumors Complicating Pregnancy."

Along with Dr. Winsey, Dr. Hall was one of the founders of Provident Hospital.

The Medical and Surgical School of Christ’s Institution of Baltimore City (also called the Medico-Chirurgical and Theological College of Christ’s Institution) was the first Black medical school incorporated in Baltimore. The school was still in existence as late as 1918. However, it graduated very few physicians and there is scant information about it and it doesn’t appear on the 1909 Flexner Report of Medical Schools.

In 1885, The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland changed its constitution from “gentlemen members” to “persons” due to the number of Blacks and women who were becoming physicians and wanted to join.

Local reference materials list a number of other early Black medical societies, including:

·        The Maryland Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association.

·         The Maryland Colored Medical Association

·         The Maryland State Medical Association

·         MeDeSo – the Medical Dental Society, and finally,

·         The Monumental City Medical Society.

In 1983, MedChi elected Dr. Roland Smoot as its first Black president.

In 1963, Dr. Smoot was appointed chief of medicine at Provident Hospital, the same year Hopkins permitted him to have admitting privileges - a first for an African-American physician at Hopkins. In 1978, Dr. Smoot was named an assistant dean for student affairs at Hopkins and spent the next 26 years recruiting and counseling students at the school. 

MedChi is proud of its long history supporting Black physicians in Maryland.

Huntington Williams, M.D.

Several months ago, I was lucky enough to get an intern to help me unpack and catalogue 73 boxes of books and ephemera which we had gotten from the Maryland Center for History and Culture. I had met Caroline Williams at a small lunch and invited her to come visit MedChi. In the course of our conversation and tour, I asked if she'd like to come work for us as an intern, and she accepted. She's off to graduate school now, but wrote this blog post before she left. Thanks for everything, Caroline!

Huntington Williams, M.D.
By Caroline G. Williams

When I started to work at the Maryland State Medical Society this Spring, helping Meg Fairfax Fielding and the MedChi team organize over 70 boxes of medical archives, I had no idea that I would discover that some of its pre-eminent members were part of my family's story, including my great-grandfather, Huntington Williams, M.D.

At the time of meeting Meg, I was finishing up a project that I began in March of 2020, when COVID-19 was declared as a National Emergency.

Instead of staying in New York City, which was hard-hit by the pandemic, I took the Amtrak train to Baltimore and spent the next 15 months working remotely from my parents' home.

In my spare time, I started to unpack over 30 cardboard boxes filled with family documents that had been kept in the storage area of the basement. The boxes had been unopened for decades, and the documents dated back to the 1600s. They included early daguerreotypes, old black-and-white photographs, drawings, love letters, correspondences, diaries, calendars, genealogical records, banking documents, receipts, newspaper clippings, academic notebooks, medical books, and scientific publications.

I was fascinated by the material and began to organize it into an archive. Much of the material had been assembled by Huntington Williams M.D. (1892-1992), and his wife, Mary Camilla McKim. He was the Health Commissioner of Baltimore from 1931 to 1962, and his role models and mentors in the field of public health included influences such as Sir William Osler, William H. Welch, and Henry M. Hurd. Osler, Welch, and Hurd were pioneers of modern American medicine. They were also devoted to MedChi's mission. Osler was perhaps the most famous. He came to Baltimore from Canada and was one of the Big Four founders of Johns Hopkins Medicine. He left in 1905 to become the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford.

William Welch, the pathologist, had perhaps the most enduring influence on American medicine. He was instrumental in founding the School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1918, getting the Rockefeller Foundation to give the money for the first school of public health in America to Johns Hopkins University instead of Harvard.

Henry Hurd is perhaps the least well-known. He was the first Director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He kept the trains running on time, made sure that Osler and Welch and other doctors at Hopkins published all of their medical findings, and was a surrogate father to my great-grandfather, hosting him and his family for Sunday lunch at the Hospital every week during his childhood, after Huntington’s own father, George Huntington Williams, died of typhoid fever.

A number of documents and photographs in my family's archive had the names Osler, Hurd, and Welch on them, but, at the time, I had no understanding of who these individuals were, and I definitely did not know how or why they were important to modern medicine.

That changed when I began to organize and publish the material. And it really changed when I was invited to a lunch and met Meg Fairfax Fielding, the head of the History of Medicine in Maryland, in the Spring of 2023, and learned that MedChi needed to unpack and organize over 70 boxes of medical archives.

The time I had spent with the family archive was just the first round of what I was about to experience at MedChi.

When I arrived at MedChi, Meg showed me the exhibit space that will be used when MedChi’s new museum launches in 2024. The first exhibit I saw was a wall of bookplates of MedChi members who collected books and donated some or all of their collection to the Society.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the bookplate of my great-grandfather, Huntington Williams M.D.

Huntington Williams, M.D. trained in the field of public health because his father, George Huntington Williams, died of typhoid fever he contracted during a field trip in Western Maryland; and typhoid fever was a preventable disease. George Huntington Williams was the first professor of geology at Johns Hopkins and trained the first generation of geologists in this country. He was instrumental in getting William Welch to come to Johns Hopkins in the early days of the University. Sir William Osler took the train from Baltimore to Utica, New York, to try to save his life when he fell ill. When the School of Hygiene and Public Health opened its doors in 1918, the Spanish Flu epidemic was raging, William Welch was sick with the flu, and Huntington Williams, M.D. was on the front steps waiting to get in.

William Welch later played a role in my great-grandfather getting his first job as a District Health officer in New York State and helped bring him back to Baltimore as the City Health Commissioner in 1931.

I learned all this from my great-grandfather's memoir, which is part of the family archive, and from helping MedChi unpack and organize its own book collection and archive, which will be part of the Society's Museum launch in 2024.

I hope you come visit the Rare Book Room exhibit in 2024. I have had the pleasure of working on the project and hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.  

In the words of Huntington Williams M.D.:

“Books have always been at the very center of my personal interest; I began collecting them at a very early age. This interest developed because I have an insatiable curiosity… My father influenced me in ways that I can’t even remember, but I’m conscious of this as a solid fact…Growing up in Baltimore I often talked to family members and to a number of close family friends older than myself who had known my father well. They were mentors to me, especially Dr. Henry M. Hurd and Dr. William H. Welch. With others, they helped shape my views about life and eventually my career... Dr. Hurd was a very remarkable hospital director. In the days of Dr. Welch and Dr. Osler, when they were doing their finest research work here at Hopkins, he was the man who saw to it that these world leaders in medicine produced the texts of their addresses and papers. Otherwise, this knowledge would have been lost to prosperity. He published these texts in the Hopkins Hospital Bulletin... Dr. Hurd, Dr. Welch, and Dr. Osler were all great founders of public health in this country."

You will be able to read books published by or about all of these doctors and more! 

Thanks, Caroline!

Celebrate Doctors Day!

 

Celebrate National Doctors Day 2023

For Doctors Day, the Center for a Healthy Maryland invites you to make a contribution in honor or memory of a special person or mentor who made an impact on your career. The act of honoring another person is a powerful celebration of their significance.

Your gift can be in honor or in memory of someone who made a monumental contribution or was an inspiring figure. These people touch our lives and make the world a better place and they should be acknowledged. What better way than with a contribution in their name? Please click HERE to make a gift in memory or in honor of the person who was most influential on your medical career or a physician whom you admire. 

A personalized acknowledgement will be sent to the honoree.

Highlights in the History of Black Physicians in Maryland

Coming in a little late for Black History Month with this article, but I just found it in the Archives, and thought I'd share it. Unfortunately, the document was un-dated, but I am guessing it was written sometime in the mid-1980s.

Highlights in the History of Black Physicians in Maryland

The history of Maryland’s Black physicians is long and virtually unexplored. One of the earliest reports of a black physician practicing in Maryland dates from 1750. Creating an accurate and complete chronology will be a challenging and consuming process for social and medical historians. The following chronology, while no means complete, attempts to highlight some of the major events in this history.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century References to Black Physicians

1750 - Henry Game, a slave in Somerset County, was given his freedom and praise in the October 29^th Maryland Gazette, as a successful “Guinea Doctor.”

1818 - Two “men of colour” Marlborough and Gibson, mentioned as practicing medicine without a license on the Eastern Shore.

1832 - Dr. Lewis G. Wells is reputed to have attended the Washington University School of Medicine in Baltimore (now extinct) and to have been Baltimore’s only Black doctor in the ante-bellum period.

1836 - Samuel Ford McGill, the first Liberian colonist to receive a medical education in the United States, attended the Washington University Medical School in Baltimore, until he was dismissed due to pressure from white students. McGill eventually attended Dartmouth where he graduated with a medical degree in 1838. McGill was sent back to Liberia and eventually became its colonial governor.

Black Hospitals in Maryland

1865 - The Dr. G.W. Kennard’s Hospital, a proprietary establishment was formed. Dr. Kennard also established the Kennard Sanitorium during this period.

1894 - The Provident Hospital and Free Dispensary was formed.

1902 - William Bishop, MD, a Black physician, helped found the Annapolis Emergency Hospital (later Anne Arundel General Hospital). The constitution states that it was founded for “white and colored patients.”

Baltimore’s Black Medical School

1900 - The Medical and Surgical School of Christ’s Instution of Baltimore City (also called the Medico-Chirurgical and Theological College of Christ’s Institution) was incorporated. The school was still in existance as late as 1918. Apparently, it graduated very few physicians.

Maryland’s Black Physicians and Organized Medicine

Membership in the State Medical Society

1882 - The state medical society, The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, admitted its first Black member, Whitfield Winsey, MD

1884 - Reverdy M. Hall was admitted to membership in the Faculty. Dr. Hall was one of the founders of Provident Hospital, one of Baltimore’s earliest Black hospitals.

1885 - The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland changed its constitution from “gentlemen members” to “persons” due to the number of Black and women who were becoming physicians and wanted to join.

1887 - William Henry Thompson was admitted to membership in the Faculty.

There were no additional Black members admitted to the Faculty until 1949.

1926 - Request made by a white physician on behalf of Dr. D.H.M. Williams for library privileges. Instead of confronting the issues, the Faculty took no action.

1939 - George McDonald, MD, a Black physician and president of a local Black medical society, writes a letter in changing the state’s medical society’s position on allowing library privileges to Black physicians.

1940 - The Faculty votes to allow library privileges to all Black members who are members in good standing of the Black medical society, as well as to allow Black physicians to attend all scientific meetings at the Faculty.

1949 - The Faculty voted to accept Black physicians as full-fledged members. However, it was decided that component (i.e. county) societies could elect Black members at their own discretion.

1973 - Aris T. Allen, MD, a noted civic leader and two-term state legislator, as well as physician, became the first Black officer when he was elected Second Vice-President of the Faculty.

1976 - Dr. Allen was once again elected, this time as Vice-President.

1983 - Dr. Roland T. Smoot, a prominent Black physician was elected as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty’s first Black president in its [then] 185 years of existence.

Scientific Societies

The Clinical Society of Maryland was organized in 1875 for the advancement of medical science. It existed until 1901 when it merged with the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty.

1883 - Dr. Whitfield Winsey and Dr. Reverdy M. Hall were admitted to the membership in the Clinical Society of Maryland without protest. Both physicians were active participants of the society.

Maryland’s Black Medical Societies

Early in the 1900s, Maryland’s Black physicians formed the Maryland Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association. Local reference materials list a number of other Black medical societies. Whether these were all the same organizations, or separate ones is not clear. Their names were:

• The Maryland Colored Medical Association
• The Maryland State Medical Society (or Association)
• MeDeSo – the Medical Dental Society, and finally,
• The [then] current Black medical society in Baltimore, the Monumental City Medical Society.

Currently (document is un-dated), there are two additional Black medical societies, in addition to the Monumental City Medical Society. They are the W. Montague Cobb Medical Society, organized in the mid-1970s for Black physicians in Howard County; and a statewide Black medical society, which is an affiliate of the National Medical Association, a nationwide Black medical society.

 

Maryland Physician Health Program Celebrates 45 Years

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHYSICIAN HEALTH IN MARYLAND

Chapter 1: In the Beginning - 1978-1984

The Physician Rehabilitation Committee was formed in 1977 at the semi-annual meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland (Med Chi). The committee first met on October 10, 1977, under Dr. James Davis, the 1977-1978 President of Med Chi.

The planners included Drs. Joseph Berman, Maxwell Weisman, Charles Bagley, Joseph Chambers, and James Davis. The first chair was Jerome J. Coller, M.D., an internist from Pikesville. Dr Coller, a former chairperson of the Commission on Medical Discipline, could no longer without attempted intervention, accept physicians with treatable illnesses losing their medical licenses in Maryland. The committee was established at the direction of the Executive Committee of MedChi.

In 1978, the first full year of the Committee’s existence, they assisted thirty-five physicians with an average age of 53. These were primarily later-stage alcoholic, primary care practitioners who often had physical problems because of their drinking. Many required detoxification and inpatient rehabilitation. Several died of active illness, some retired, and a few left the state of Maryland. Still, most reached abstinence and a few entered true recovery.

Under Dr. Coller's energetic direction, physician assistance groups were formed in Baltimore, Bethesda, and on the Eastern Shore. Enthusiastic physicians on the Committee formed intervention teams, of two or three members each. The teams traveled from Oakland in Garrett County to Crisfield in Somerset County to try and help their troubled colleagues. These doctors were Robert McDermott, William Dixon, Leo Hennigan, Timothy Barilla, John Griswold, Robert Kent, Patrick Adams, Edson Moody, Edward Kitlowski, Michael Bisco, Michael Hayes, Richard Anderson, Irving Cohen, Robert McDaniel, and Martin Valaske. They all devoted countless, selfless hours to the recovery of their fellow physicians.

In time treatment contacts were organized, and procedures and guidelines were established. All the while, Ms. Constance Townsend, executive assistant to Med Chi's executive director, provided administrative support services to the committee. MedChi’s Executive Committee supported the committee, the county medical societies participated in the committee's activities, and the auxiliary had a representative. From 1977 to 1985, the Physician Rehabilitation Committee made a difference in the lives of over 200 physicians.

Chapter 2: Early Growth, A Program Develops - 1985-1990

Dr Michael Hayes an original committee member became chair. A part-time program director was hired in 1985 and became full time in 1986. Funding was obtained from a ten-dollar assessment on the medical society membership fee and more recently, from a yearly donation by the Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland. From the beginning, the services of the program were available to all licensed and non-licensed physicians and medical students in Maryland, as well as their family members, but funding was limited as was active outreach and meaningful preventive education.  

A significant change came to the Program in 1990. In the 1990 legislative session, the State Legislature included, at the request of the Med Chi Executive Committee, an amendment to SB 138 (the Board of Physician Quality Assurance bill) assessing all licensed Maryland physicians a $50.00 pass-through fee to support the Physician Rehabilitation Program. The bill, supported by the chairman of the board of physician quality assurance and the board’s executive director, passed, and was signed by Governor Donald Schaefer. This provided a significant infusion of funds, and these resources marked a new era in the activities of the Physician Rehabilitation Program with the Physician Rehabilitation Committee serving in an advisory role. In 1992 the law was changed to allow for the use of these funds to support the Peer Review activities as well as to fund the Physician Rehabilitation Program.

Chapter 3: Establishing balance and moving Straight Forward - 1990–2000

The late 1980’s saw a time of conflict with the Board and the program dedicated a great deal of effort to gain the Board’s trust and in accepting that having an illness was not prima facie evidence that the physician was incompetent or dangerous. By 1990 the relationship between the Board and the Program had found a fulcrum point of being collegial while recognizing that we came to the same place, helping physicians and protecting patients, from different perspectives.  Also during this time, the program was an active participant in the founding and expansion of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs, serving on the inaugural and multiple additional terms, of the Board of Governors.

A new and ambitious outreach effort saw the program develop a monthly newsletter sent to every physician in Maryland. Straight Forward a newsletter in the tabloid-style was mailed to every physician and hospital in the state of Maryland. Ahead of its time in many ways Straight Forward contained in its issues, in addition to physician health and wellbeing, discussion of such topics as, physician-assisted suicide, legalization of marijuana, professional burnout, and physician career satisfaction. Each issue had a dialectical and book reviews were frequently included. Over time the newsletter was reduced to a quarterly offering with a distribution of about 20,000 issues per quarter. During these years we had eighty-thousand pairs of eyes reading about the work of the program. A decision to redistribute funding led to a loss of staff and ability to continue our newsletter after a six-year run. 

Chapter 4 - The Name Changes, But the Mission Remains the Same - 2000-2010

The program moved into the next millennia with a strong commitment to helping physicians and other healthcare professionals. Physician Assistants had come to the program in the early 90’s asking to receive assistance. It was in the early 2000’s that the program was cleared to work with PA’s. Changes at the Board of Physicians brought challenges to the program and in 2004 the supreme challenge of having our funding removed when the Board elected to keep the funds and begin a program of their own. The Board elected to continue using the name Physician Rehabilitation Program, so the “new” program became the Maryland Physician Health Program (MPHP). With the support of MedChi the MPHP continued to provide services to physicians and allied healthcare professionals. Maryland Hospitals, with the endorsement of the Maryland Hospital Association, provided financial support via payment of fees to the program. The fee established a relationship between the program and hospital allowing for us to provide information regarding the progress of a physician (or allied health professional) who had been referred to us.  We also provide an annual presentation on physician impairment. Participating in the program allows hospitals to meet Joint Commission requirements for a non-disciplinary process to assist impaired physicians. The support from almost all hospitals allowed the program to continue providing service to Maryland’s physicians and allied health professionals.

Chapter 5: A New Model and New Horizons - 2010-Present

In 2009, the Board of Physicians put out an RFP seeking a contractor to operate the Maryland Professional Rehabilitation Program. The MPHP now under the MedChi 501C 3 affiliate Center for a Healthy Maryland (the Center) had found sound footing and was functioning in good stead. Previously, the program had both private, voluntary, participants and Board-ordered ones. As this had led to conflict in the past, we decided that it was time for a new approach. There would be two programs the MPHP, private and confidential and we would bid on the RFP and create the MPRP for board-referred physicians and professionals. The contract was awarded to the Center. The first participants in the MRPR came on-board in January 2010. The files of Board-referred participants would be separate from MPHP files and would be the property of the Board of Physicians.  Under the Center these programs have served physicians and allied health professionals across the state of Maryland.

It is essential to mention that sadly during this part of our story that we suffered the loss of Dr Stanley Platman who had been chair of the Physician Health Committee for 35 years and the first medical director of the MPHP. Stan was a dedicated physician, psychiatrist, researcher, and friend to the cause of physician health. We felt his loss deeply.

In an effort to further expand our services and to broaden our reach in regard to helping health professionals, we created the Maryland Healthcare Professionals Program (MHPP).  This program provides services to allied health professionals who seek help privately and are not under the auspices of the Board of Physicians. Additionally, MHPP services are available to podiatrists, chiropractors, and veterinarians. In October 2016 the MPHP and MHPP were recognized as “Safe Harbor” programs under Maryland Law. When physicians and allied health professionals are referred to either of these programs where a mandatory report would be usual, the report need not be made provided no patient harm had occurred. Efforts at further growth will be focused on other healthcare professionals and those in health services that may not meet the classical definition of health professional but clearly impact the delivery of health services each day in the state of Maryland.

As our journey continues, we look to grow and expand. Like a tree’s branches reaching out toward the sun, we to look to reach out and be available to an expanding group of human souls who simply need help. While we begin to explore where can we go, who can we help, we stand firm and remain ever committed to our roots, to our original mission, the health and wellbeing of the physicians of the State of Maryland.

Those who have come before – former program staff:

Robert White, MA, LCPC
Emily Ferris
Catherine Kowalewski, MS, CCDC
Thomas Dolan, Grad Cert, CCDC, CSC-AD
Cora Teter, MA
Karen Duszynski
Vivian Smith
Lori Robinson
Catherine Ketchum
Elaine Gisriel, MS
Shawn Thomas
Rhonda Sprout
Chae Kwak, LCSW-C
Susan Bailey, MD
Laura Berg, LCSW-C
Linda Rodriguez, LCSW-C
Frederick Gager, PsyD
Rachel Reisman
Katharine Hughes, PhD
Annie Norton, LCSW-C
Janice Whelchel
Paul McClelland, MD
Aisha Chaudhry
Tanya Bryant, LCSW-C
Matteo Ricci, MS, LCPC
Lonny Samuels, LCSW-C
Syeira Anthony, LMSW
Maureen McCarron, LCSW-C
Jennifer West, LCPC
Terrence Morgan, LCSW-C, LCADC
Lisa Joy, LCSW-C
Olivia Culotta, LCPC
Sarah Riggs, LCSW-C
Latasha Roles MEd, LGPC

Current Staff

Margaret Kroen LCSW-C, Program Director

Arthur Hildreth MD, Medical Director MPHP, MHPP

Martin Rusinowitz MD, Medical Director MPRP, MHPP

Astrid Richardson-Ashley LCSW-C, Senior Clinical Manager

Amber Thrasher LCSW-C, Clinical Manager II

Holly Wade MA, LCPC, Clinical Manager II

Domenica Stone, Chief Administrative Officer

Michael Llufrio, Director of Operations

Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls

In 1891, graduates from the Women's Medical College in  Baltimore founded the Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls to provide out-patient medical care and advice to women. Establishing an evening clinic was important because many working women could not leave during the daytime to go to a doctor's appointment, and many women just disliked having a male physician. 

The Dispensary also provided an opportunity for female medical students to gain practical experience. But the Dispensary was not just for providing medical care. It also provided a clean milk distribution service for sick babies, social services for families, a visiting nurse program and public baths.

The women who founded the Evening Dispensary were mainly graduates of the Women’s Medical College, both here in Baltimore and in Philadelphia. Many of them were also among the Faculty’s earliest female members. Dr. Lillian Welsh and Dr. Mary Sherwood, both on the faculty of Goucher College, were two of the most well-known members.

Contemporary accounts note that these early physicians were friends with the Suffragettes and were proponents of women on bicycles.

International Women's Day 2023

To celebrate International Women's Day today, I thought I would share a few vignettes about women and MedChi.

• In 1882, the Women's Medical College was founded by several members of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty. The aim was to provide a medical college of the highest standard for women. A preliminary exam was given to all applicants in order to be admitted. There were on-site clinics and labs, and for practical experience, the students worked at Good Samaritan Hospital and at the Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls.
• In 1885, the Constitution of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland was ammended to change the word "gentlemen" to "persons." This simple change meant that women and Blacks could be admitted to the membership of the Faculty. Five of the earliest female members were also very active in the sufferagette movement.
• In 1896, Sir William Osler, MD hired Marcia Crocker Noyes as the first librarian at MedChi. She went on to become the organization's Secretary, and founded the Medical Library Association, among many other accomplishments. 
• In 2002, MedChi's first woman President, Catherine Smoot-Haselnus, M.D., a board-certified ophthalmologist, was elected.
• In 2004, Willarda Edwards, MD became the first Black woman President of MedChi. She spent ten years in the Navy, both on active duty and at Bethesda Naval Hospital. She has been active on the national level at the AMA.
• Currently, nearly 40% of MedChi members identify as female. There is gender parity on MedChi's Board of Directors, and many of the senior staff at MedChi are Women. 
• Half of all current medical students are women.

To see more posts about women, please click here.