Save the Date: First Annual President's Brunch

At the suggestion of MedChi President, Eric Wargotz, MD, we are initiating the First Annual President's Brunch to Benefit the MedChi Museum of Maryland Medical History. 

We hope that you can join us!

Hopkins School of Medicine Photos in the Osler Years

I was going through some of our old Osler books, as well as the ones I recently acquired (see last post), and scanned in a bunch of pictures. Because of the age of the books, they are all out of copyright, so I am republishing some of them here. 

See how many of the names you recognize from Old Baltimore Medicine days!

The 2024 Hunt History of Medicine Lecture

One of the highlights of the History Committee's work is the annual Thomas E. Hunt, Jr., MD History of Medicine Lecture. And there was only one topic that we could present this year - Our Own History!

MedChi President, and medical history aficionado, Benjamin H. Lowentritt, MD, FACS, will present this year's lecture on the history of MedChi, "From Leeches to Lasers: 225 Years of Service."

This year's lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 22 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The evening will begin with a light reception and the lecture will begin at 6:00 p.m. There will be a time for questions and answers after the lecture.

Again this year, we will be presenting the lecture in hybrid form, but hope that you will join us in person and take the opportunity to visit the MedChi Museum of Maryland Medical History. 

When you RSVP, please let us know whether you will be attending in person or via Zoom. Additional details, including parking, will be sent out shortly before the event. If you have any questions, please email Meg Fielding HERE.

We will look forward to seeing at the Hunt Lecture!  

World Premiere! The Museum and Archives YouTube Channel!

For the past several months, I have been working on a series of twelve videos, and I have just created a YouTube channel, MedChi Museum and Archives, which will eventually feature all twelve of these video. Right now, there are only eight on-line, but expect the additional four or five shortly.

Here are the videos and links to them:

1. Our Founding Link

2. The First Meeting Link

3. The War of 1812 Link

4. The Napoleon Chest Link

5. The First Dental School Link

6. Sir William Osler, MD Link

7. Max Brödel, Medical Illustrator Link

8. What's in a Name? Link

Each video is about five minutes long, so I hope you will either watch them in one go, or dip in and out and watch a few at a time.

Let me know what you think!

Save the Date: 2024 Hunt History of Medicine Lecture

When we were considering topics for the 2024 Thomas E. Hunt, Jr., M.D. History of Medicine in Maryland, among the obvious ones was our 225th Anniversary this year. We have actually talked about this for a few years in anticipation, and now that it's finally here, this is the topic!

MedChi's 176th President, Benjamin H. Lowentritt, will present the lecture "From Leeches to Lasers" an overview of MedChi's history, and medicine in Maryland over the course of 225 years.

More details will be forthcoming as we move closer to the date of the event, but if you'd like to RSVP in the meantime, click here. 

Osler's Baltimore - 1889 to 1905

I was recently invited to give a talk at the Annual American Osler Society Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Here is my lecture. 

I should begin this talk by telling you that I am a 12th generation Baltimorean on my mother’s side, so of course, I am biased, and think that Baltimore is the center of the universe! 

The Baltimore where Dr. William Osler landed in 1889 was a busy and active place, on the cusp, as ever, of accomplishing great things. With the bounty from the Chesapeake Bay, the fertile fields of the Eastern Shore, and the coal-mining mountains of Western Maryland, Baltimore was and is a major import/export center with goods from its factories, waters, fields, and mountains being sent world-wide, and imports coming in from around the world.

Between 1850 and 1900, Baltimore’s population doubled to more than a half-a-million residents. Baltimore was the second largest immigration point after Ellis Island. Although many immigrants continued their voyages into America’s interior, many stayed where they landed. Most were Irish, Polish, Greek, or Italian, and their descendants are still integral to Baltimore’s many and diverse neighborhoods.

The City embarked on a huge building campaign in the last 20 years of the 1800s, and the first ten years of the 1900s. New parks, schools, a new city hall (designed by a 22-year old architect) and municipal buildings were being built, and the city’s footprint expanded from ten to thirty square miles.

The Port of Baltimore is significantly farther inland than other east coast ports, so overland transport costs are significantly reduced. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad connected Baltimore to cities and states to the west, and steamships opened Baltimore to the world. Interestingly, the B&O Railroad family circles back around in the Osler and Hopkins stories. 

According to minutes from the Trustees of Johns Hopkins on September 25, 1888, it was a done deal that Osler would be coming to Baltimore as Chief of Medicine. The announcement caused quite a bit of consternation along the eastern seaboard, as both Boston and Philadelphia were interested in having Osler. Boston assumed he would, of course, go there, and Philadelphia was shocked that he would actually leave.

It was to be another six months before he moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia, a distance of just over 100 miles. This time was filled with consultations, meetings, letters and telegrams, numerous lectures, and finally, the valedictory speech to medical graduates at Penn.Osler’s first public oratory in Baltimore was at the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty’s Annual Meeting on April 24, 1889. His topic, “License to Practice” alluded to the upcoming opening of the new medical school at Hopkins and was printed in full in the Maryland Medical Journal. It ran seven single-spaced, double-column pages!

While there were other, smaller medical schools in Baltimore at the time, most were second rate, at best. The Maryland Legislature had recently rejected the establishment of a Board of Examiners which would ensure that physicians were qualified to practice medicine. 

When the Faculty was founded in 1799 (this is our 225th anniversary year), it was to prevent quacks and pretenders to the healing arts from practicing medicine. With the poor quality of medical schools, and the legislature’s refusal to set up the Board of Examiners, pretenders to the medical arts were once again practicing without oversight. 

On Monday, May 7, 1889, the Johns Hopkins Hospital finally opened its doors with a reception for the public, and on the following day, it opened to physicians, medical students and others. 

According to the City Directory of 1890, Osler lived at number 209 West Monument Street, just several houses west of the esteemed philanthropist and founder of Baltimore’s public library system, Enoch Pratt.

Ironically, the houses along this row, with the exception of Pratt’s, were torn down in the 1980s to make room for the Maryland Historical Society’s headquarters.

By 1892, Osler’s address is listed at Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was living while working on writing his book, along with articles for various medical journals and lectures he gave.

Unfortunately, there are no digitized city directories for the intervening years, but by 1901, Osler is listed as living at No. 1 West Franklin Street, directly across from the beautiful and classic Unitarian Church; 

around the corner from the elegant Catholic Basilica; and just a block from the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Osler was not just a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, he was also active at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine.

He encouraged interchanges between the two sets of faculty members, even presenting lectures at the University and appearing at the first meeting of their History Club. He also strongly encouraged the older and younger members to gather at the Faculty, which was a “neutral ground” between Hopkins and the University of Maryland. Osler was a great proponent of inter-generational and inter-institutional learning.

Among Dr. and Mrs. Osler’s closest friends in Baltimore were Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs. 

Dr. Jacobs was one of the early “latch-keyers” who lived next to Osler’s house on Franklin Street. Mrs. Jacobs was the former Mary Frick Garrett, the widow of Robert Garrett, President of the powerful B&O Railroad. Dr. Jacobs’ practice consisted of a singular patient – Mr. Robert Garrett. Five years after Mr. Garrett died, in an extraordinarily low-key ceremony, Mary Garrett and Dr. Jacobs were married, perhaps taking the Osler’s wedding as their guide. 

Most interestingly, Robert’s sister, also named Mary Garrett, gave the money to Hopkins to tide it over when it had financial troubles in its early years, with the proviso that Hopkins would admit women from the start. The two Marys were on opposite sides politically, with Mary Frick Garrett being very conservative, opposing both suffrage and co-education, while Mary Elizabeth Garrett strongly supported both of these ideals. 

In 1896, Osler needed a care-taker for the nearly-dead library at the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty, where he was now President. Of course, he was friends with bibliophile, Bernard C. Steiner, who succeeded his father as the president of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Mr. Steiner recommended Marcia Crocker Noyes, a bright young woman who worked for the library in circulation, and he knew she was up for the challenge of this new position.

Miss Noyes and Dr. Osler became great friends, and until his death, he sent her special books for the Faculty’s library. Miss Noyes visited the Oslers several times in England, and she and Osler kept up a long, warm correspondence.

Although Osler was a homebody who preferred being with his books and his writings, he was often called on to be a guest, or a guest of honor, at black tie dinners. In Baltimore, many of these occasions were held at the prestigious, and until recently, men-only, Maryland Club, an imposing granite edifice a few blocks from Osler’s house on Franklin Street.

The Maryland Club was a frequent gathering place for the men from Hopkins because of its proximity to both the hospital and the Mount Vernon neighborhood where many of the early Hopkins physicians lived. 

Luckily, there is a menu from a specific dinner held on May 15, 1904. This menu sold at auction a few years ago for more than $7,500++. The purpose of the dinner was for George Smith, the publisher of the 63-volume set of biographies, to present them to Osler. Many of the “old timers” from Hopkins attended and someone had the foresight to get everyone to sign the menu, including the reclusive and elusive Egerton Yorick Davis.

Harvey Cushing’s book states that after the dinner, a procession of guests left the club and headed towards 1 West Franklin, with barrow-loads of the books for Osler’s library. This is particularly funny when you realize that there is a steep hill going down and an equally steep hill rising between the Club and Osler’s house.

Osler jumped into life in Baltimore, serving on myriad committees, including one to decrease cases of typhoid and tuberculosis in Baltimore. This could have been, in part, because of his friendship with Dr. Jacobs, who, after his only patient died, became interested in caring for those with tuberculosis, and then eliminating it. 

Osler and Jacobs established the National Foundation for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (now the American Lung Association), and Jacobs’ wife founded a hospital for children with tuberculosis in the mountains west of Baltimore.

Things were coming to a head in 1904, with Osler traveling across the country and around the world to lecture. Even when he was at home, he was inundated with people stopping by the house calling on him. Mrs. Osler had had enough and was worried about Osler’s health if he didn’t slow down.

But there was one more thing that may have cemented the Oslers' decision to leave Baltimore. 

In February of 1904, a massive fire ravaged Baltimore City. It started small, but fanned by brisk winter winds, it spread to the north and east of where it began. Baltimore’s fire department was not large enough to stop the flames, and they called for engines from Washington, DC, and New York, Atlantic City and Philadelphia.

It is hard to imagine the terror the family felt as they knew the fire was coming closer and closer, and getting bigger and bigger. Cushing talks about Osler arriving back in Baltimore late on the day the fire started, and briefly mentioning the fire in his journal. Of course, there were guests at both Osler’s house and at the latch-key house, and everyone gathered at the Osler’s.

By Monday afternoon, the fire could be seen through the south-facing windows of the house. While Osler was generally unflappable, the jingling of his watch-chain and smoking more than his daily allocation of cigarettes, gave his nerves away. 22

Flaming embers were falling on nearby houses, driven by the winds, and the police came by to tell the household to get ready to leave. The servants got a wagon, and the family’s most precious items, especially Osler’s books, were packed in trunks and barrels. The cooks made a final dinner of oyster stew and plenty of coffee, and Revere was awoken and dressed. But soon after, the winds shifted, and the fire changed direction. It eventually stopped when it couldn’t jump the Jones Falls which divided the city into east and west segments.

However, Johns Hopkins was not as lucky. The University owned a significant amount of property in downtown Baltimore, inherited from the actual Johns Hopkins, and much of it was in the “Burnt District” as it came to be known. The Hospital was set to lose upwards of $400,000 in the money of the day, and it would be a long time before they recovered financially.

By the time The Great Baltimore Fire was controlled, a total of more than 1,500 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,000 were damaged. The fire consumed a total of 81 city blocks from the harbor to within several hundred yards of the Osler’s house on Franklin Street. Ironically, the engineers who rebuilt Baltimore established a club, which eventually found its home in the old Garrett-Jacobs Mansion.

In just over a year, Osler and his family had left Baltimore and moved to Oxford. 

A few years later, the house on Franklin Street was demolished for a high-rise apartment. Members of the Faculty broke into the demolition site and took beams which were later made into gavels for each of the state medical societies, long-time members of the Faculty, and other friends.

The Oslers occasionally came back to Baltimore, and when they did, there was a whirl of social events, from cocktails with the Cushings, to brandy and cigars with old friends at the Maryland Club, and elegant dinners with the Jacobs. 

In 1909, the newly built Faculty Headquarters, featuring the central Osler Hall, was opened with much fanfare and celebration. 

Osler had advocated for this new building for years and wanted it to include an extensive medical stacks library and a cozy reading room. He gave a brief thank you speech at the opening, and then attended a grand dinner in the evening. During the remainder of this trip to Baltimore and the States, he was lavishly entertained by old friends and colleagues.

Although Osler was only in Baltimore for 16 years, it was the longest he stayed anywhere and seemed to be happy living in the city.

We are honored that he considered Baltimore home, and we still see his influence and accomplishments everywhere.

Thank you.

 Meg Fairfax Fielding
American Osler Society Conference
Kansas City, May 2024

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.  

In Memory: Dr. George Salim Malouf, Sr.

Dr. George Malouf, Sr. was born in Lebanon and received his Doctorate in Medicine from the French Faculty of Medicine in Beirut. After completing his residency training at Boston City Hospital, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and came to Maryland.

In 1958, he opened up his ophthalmology practice in Prince George’s County, the Malouf Eye Center.  Dr. Malouf was joined in his practice by his two sons, Dr. Alan Malouf and Dr. George Malouf, Jr., and the practice grew to locations in Bowie, Hyattsville and Suitland.

Throughout his career, Dr. Malouf was very involved in the community and in organized medicine. He was a charter member of the Maryland Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons and served as President of the Society in 1981. 

He was active in the Prince George’s County Medical Society, serving as President and as a Board member. He served as President of MedChi in 1984 and as the Chairman of the Maryland delegation to the American Medical Association.

Dr. Malouf was the recipient of many professional honors and awards. In 1988, he received the Governor’s Citation for “deep commitment to his fellow citizens of Maryland, as demonstrated by his pioneering efforts in the field of ophthalmology and his distinguished record of community service…”

Other awards include the Prince Georgian of the Year Award in 1988 and MedChi’s A.H. Robbins Award for “outstanding community service by a physician” in 1987.

In 1991, Dr. Malouf was honored with the prestigious Benjamin Rush Award for Citizenship and Community Service from the American Medical Association. The award was given for his outstanding contribution to the community, for citizenship, and public service that is above and beyond the call of duty of a practicing physician.

Please click here to read an oral history interview with Dr. Malouf from 2011. 

Dr. George Salim Malouf died on May 28, 2022.

An Eyewitness to the Founding of JHH

The Maryland Center for History & Culture, formerly the Maryland Historical Society, recently shared an eyewitness account to the earliest years of Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was written by a former President of the Faculty, Lewellys F. Barker, whose portrait we also hold in our collection. 

Dr. Barker was a Quaker from Canada, as were a number of the early Hopkins physicians. In 1906, Dr. Barker was named as Dr. William Osler's successor as Professor of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The article talks about Dr. Barker's early days at Hopkins and then the years following its founding. The post was in reference to the fact that today is the anniversary of the 1775 birth of the founder, Johns Hopkins.

There is also a brief reference to the Faculty and Marcia!

A link to the article is here. You can read about the house where Dr. Barker lived in Guilford here. 

The Pratt & MedChi

When Dr. William Osler became President of the Faculty in 1896-97, one of his missions was to completely update the pitiful books, pamphlets and periodical publications that made up the library. 

The Pratt, as it's known, was located on Cathedral Street between West Franklin and West Mulberry Streets, just around the corner from Dr. Osler's residence on West Franklin Street. 

The original branch of the Pratt had opened in 1886, and by 1894, it had one of the largest collections in the country. However, the growing collection meant that a new building was necessary and by 1931, the library's staff, services and 400,000 volumes had moved to temporary quarters at Redwood Street and Hopkins Plaza while the original building was demolished and a new building was constructed on the original site. 

One unique feature of the newly built main library was the huge windows, akin to those at a large department store, for showing off the books held in the library's collection. Unusually, it featured an open, light-filled main hall.

Backing up a few decades to 1896, Dr. Osler needed a trained librarian to manage the Faculty's peripatetic collection of books, which had both grown and shrunk over the previous half-century, and so he consulted his friend, Bernard C. Steiner, the head of the Enoch Pratt Free Library for a recommendation.

Within two weeks of her interview with Dr. Osler on behalf of the Library Committee, Miss Marcia Crocker Noyes had accepted the position of librarian at a salary of $300 per year, and moved into an apartment in the Faculty’s building at Hamilton Terrace.

At that time, librarians were expected to be on call 24/7. A physician could ring and request a book. The librarian would search the card catalogue and pull the book from the shelves. The physician would arrive shortly thereafter, consult the book, and hurry back to his ailing patient.

While Miss Noyes knew how to catalogue and how libraries worked, she knew nothing about medicine. She said that she trained herself for the job by just doing it. She was more than willing to learn, and Dr. Osler was a good and patient teacher. 

MedChi's association with the Pratt continues to this day, and over the decades, some of our board members have also served on the Pratt's board.

Reynaldo L. Lee-Llacer, MD

 Dr. Reynaldo L. Lee-Llacer, of Stevensville, Md, passed away on April 8, 2022 at age 88. Among his many life experiences and accomplishments, he treasured most his 60-year marriage to the love of his life, Zorayda.

His story begins with his birth in San Fernando, Masbate, Philippines on May 25, 1933. As a youth he dreamed of being in the military, but ultimately chose a career in medicine. He attended the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines where he participated in ROTC and earned his medical degree in 1958.

After a three-year tour on his home island of Ticao, managing a typhoid epidemic and cholera outbreak, he left for the United States in 1962 and completed an internship and surgical residency at Prince George’s General Hospital in Maryland. He then completed a fellowship in Shock Trauma at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore, where he published scientific medical research. After two years of practice as the House Surgeon in Fairfax Hospital, Va., he opened a private surgical practice in Clinton, Maryland. Through his tireless dedication he cared for and treated countless patients for 50 years.

Dr. Lee-Llacer was board certified in General Surgery and was a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. As his expertise grew, he was called on by many medical organizations to serve in leadership roles. He was appointed by Governor Harry Hughes to the Board of Physician Quality Assurance.

Reynaldo Lee-Llacer was President of the Prince George’s Medical Society, President of the Medical Staff at Doctors Community Hospital, Prince George’s Maryland, President of the Medical Chirurgical Society of Maryland (Med Chi), elected Maryland Delegate to the American Medical Association for 16 years, President of the Society of Philippine Surgeons in America, President of the Philippine Medical Association of Metropolitan Washington, DC, President of the PEACE Foundation, Founding member of D’Bicolanos & Friends, Founder & First President of the UST Alumni-Thomasian USA, and Founder of the Philippine Medical Foundation.

He served on numerous committees and councils in the state medical society and Doctors Community Hospital, as well as other organizations. The Maryland Legislature often called him to testify on medically related matters. Dr. Reynaldo Lee-Llacer was a beacon of Maryland medicine and served humbly in the service of others.

He lived in the service of the Lord as a devout Catholic. He was an unselfish and giving individual who spent his own personal time and money serving on surgical medical missions in his beloved birth country of the Philippines. The Maryland Medical Journal dedicated issue to Reynaldo Lee-Llacer 1990, the UST Alumni Association Leadership Award 1990, Twenty Outstanding Filipinos in the United States 1993, Distinguished Son of Masbate 2005, Outstanding Service to the Filipino American Community 2005; the Dakila Achievement Award 2007, the UST Total Award 2016, and the first PMA Management Award are among the many honors Reynaldo Lee-Llacer received for his dedication, generosity, and humanitarianism. 

His love for medicine and care for his patients were only eclipsed by his adoration and love for his wife Zorayda, his five children, and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Lee-Llacer was an avid lifelong learner whose interest spanned beyond medicine. An artist himself, he admired and collected art. Among his many interests he loved to travel, read, play guitar, sing, dance, play chess, do crossword puzzles, write poems, and study world history. He was a true patriot of America and avidly supported US military organizations, veterans, and first responders, including law enforcement.

Submitted by the family of Dr. Lee-Llacer