Opium for Mothers at Bellevue

What: Women suffering from infection during childbirth were treated with high doses of opium
When: Mid Nineteenth Century
Where: Bellevue Hospital
Feb 15, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Midtown East | Tags: Alonzo Clark, Bellevue Hospital, childbed fever, Ignaz Semmelweiss, maternal health, opium, puerperal fever, Stephen Smith | Leave A Comment »
Malaria Therapy

What: A misguided effort to fight one disease, syphilis, with another, malaria.
When: 1930s
Where: The Rockefeller Institute
Jan 07, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine, Midtown East, Scientists & Institutions | Tags: African-American patients, falciparum, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, malaria, Mark F. Boyd, penicillin, plasmodia, Rockefeller Institute, syphilis | Leave A Comment »
Ginsing in Gotham

What: Elgin, America’s first public botanical garden, cultivated many plants with medical properties. Centuries later, one of those plants would reappear in medical stores in Chinatown.
When: 1801
Where: Fifth Avenue with 50 Street, Manhattan
Apr 07, 2014 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Midtown East | Tags: American ginsing, Chinatown, Chinese medicine, David Hosack, Elgin botanical garden, James Reston, Nixon in China, Panax quinquefollus | Leave A Comment »
Clandestine Abortionist

What: Ann Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, ran a 19th century abortion house at a time when physicians advocated for fertility control.
When: 1840
Where: Fifth Avenue and 52 Street, Manhattan
Apr 07, 2014 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Midtown East | Tags: abortion, Ann Trow Lohman, birth control, Comstock laws, George Washington Dixon, Madame Restell, Morris Ketchum Jesup, New York Society for the Suppression of Vice | Leave A Comment »
Power Trips

What: A secret facility in Grand Central Station housed turbines that powered electric trains
When: 1906
Where: Grand Central Station
May 16, 2011 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Midtown East, Technology & Engineering | Tags: AC/DC, Grand Central, Grand Central Terminal, M42, railways, rotary converters, trains | Leave A Comment »