Father of Gynecology?

What: A controversial statue of the “Father of Modern Gynecology”
When: 1894
Where: Fifth Avenue and 103 Street
Jul 11, 2017 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Upper East Side | Tags: Central Park, controversy, gynecology, James Marion Sims, speculum, statue, women's health | Leave A Comment »
Dental School

What: New York College of Dentistry, third oldest in the country
When: mid-1800s
Where: 161 Fifth Avenue
Jun 14, 2017 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Flatiron District, Health & Medicine, Scientists & Institutions | Tags: Andrew Spielman, dentists, Father of Orthodontics, New York College of Dentistry, New York University, New York University's College of Dentistry, Norman Kingsley | Leave A Comment »
A Rural Cemetery

What: A cemetery to address 19th century bans on downtown burials
When: mid 1800s
Where: 770 Riverside Drive, between 153 and 155 streets
Jun 13, 2017 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Upper West Side | Tags: Board of Health, cholera, disease, miasma, Trinity Church, Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, yellow fever | Leave A Comment »
The Doctors Riot

What: Armed protest of doctors who were grave robbing for medical dissection
When: 1788
Where: Trinity Church and then Manhattan-wide
Feb 24, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: Alexander Hamilton, Columbia College, George Clinton, James Duane, James Thacher, John Hicks, John Jay, Negros Burial Ground, New York Hospital | Leave A Comment »
Harlem Hospital

What: Trained African American physicians and nurses during segregation
When: Founded in 1887
Where: Harlem
Feb 18, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Harlem, Health & Medicine, Scientists & Institutions | Tags: Harlem Hospital, John Cordice, Louis Wright, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., TB | Leave A Comment »
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 »
Spanish Flu

What: Spanish flu hit New York City less drastically than some other American cities
When: 1918
Where: New York City
Feb 13, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine | Tags: 1918, Alfred Crosby, Bergensfjord, public health, Spanish flu | Leave A Comment »
Birth Control Clinic

What: One of Margaret Sanger’s first contraceptive clinics
When: 1930 to 1973
Where: 17 West 16 Street, Manhattan
Jan 24, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Flatiron District, Health & Medicine | Tags: American Birth Control League, contraception, Ethel Byrne, Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood | Leave A Comment »
Typhoid Mary’s Exile

What: Cook Mary Mallon was forcibly detained on North Brother Island to stem the spread of typhoid
When: Early 1900s
Where: North Brother Island, in the East River
Jan 24, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine, Outside Manhattan | Tags: East River, George Soper, immigrants, Mary Mallon, North Brother Island, Philip Alcabes, quarantine, Riverside Hospital, Typhoid Mary | 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 »
Factory Fire Horror

What: A fire that killed 146 employees in a factory in Greenwich Village led to the creation of the American Society of Safety Engineers and improved labor laws.
When: 1911
Where: Washington Place, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
Apr 07, 2014 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Greenwich Village, Health & Medicine | Tags: American Society of Safety Engineers, Chalk, International Women's Day, labor, Michael Hirsch, Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, Rose Imperato, Ruth Sergel, Shirtwaist Kings, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, unions | 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 »
Walking the Line on Ellis Island

What: Officers from the Public Health Service examined thousands of immigrants who arrived by ship, controlling who could enter the country
When: 1929
Where: Ellis Island, Upper New York Bay
Apr 04, 2014 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine, Outside Manhattan | Tags: Dr. Elizabeth Yew, Ellis Island, germ theory, health, immigrants, Kate Ferguson, Public Health Service, Sura Meisler | Leave A Comment »
When Hogs Ruled

What: About 20,000 hogs—one for every five people—roamed the city in the first half of the 19th century. After the outbreak of cholera epidemics in the 1830s, the pigs were persecuted by the police and driven to other boroughs. It was later discovered that they were not to blame for the epidemics.
When: 1820
Where: Everywhere in Manhattan
May 07, 2013 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Zoology | Tags: Central Park, Charles Dickens, cholera, garbage, Hog Town, hogs, Piggery Wars, pigs, pork, sanitation | Leave A Comment »
Heat Wave 1896

What: An intense heat wave killed 1,500 people and was nearly lost to history because of the paucity of records
When: 1896
Where: New York City
May 07, 2013 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Environment, Health & Medicine, Lower East Side | Tags: heat wave, natural disaster, Theodore Roosevelt | Leave A Comment »
Metropolis of Coffee

What: Coffee has been in New York since the Dutch settled. The first coffee house was the Kings Arms Tavern; the first coffee roasters was Gillies.
When: 1660s to the present
Where: The Financial District
May 07, 2013 | Categories: All stories, British Occupation to Revolution (1665-1783), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: 1964 World's Fair, coffee, coffeehouse, Donald Schoenholt, Gillies Coffee, Grand Green Coffee Warehousing, John Arbuckle Jr., South Street Seaport, The Kings Arms | Leave A Comment »
Father of Pediatrics

What: Established pediatrics as a medical field
When: 1853
Where: 20 Howard Street, Manhattan
May 07, 2013 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Scientists & Institutions, SoHo | Tags: 20 Howard Street, Abraham Jacobi, calomel, children, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York Medical College, Nursery and Child's Hospital of New York, pediatrics | Leave A Comment »
A Madhouse in the East River

What: Reporter for “The New York World,” Nellie Bly pretended to be a patient in order to spend ten days in New York’s worst mental institution. Her article transformed conditions at the institution.
When: 1887
Where: Roosevelt’s Island
Oct 21, 2012 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Outside Manhattan | Tags: "Ten Days in a Mad-House", Alexander Jackson Davis, Blackwell's Island, mental institution, Metropolitan Hospital, Nellie Bly, New York World, Roosevelt Island, The Octagon | Leave A Comment »
Black History Unearthed

What: Discovered in 1989, this slave cemetery held an estimated 15,000 individuals, and overturned the widespread notion that slavery in America was largely a Southern phenomenon.
When: 1700s
Where: 290 Broadway
Jul 17, 2012 | Categories: All stories, British Occupation to Revolution (1665-1783), Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: African Burial Ground, archaeology, Doctors' Riot, slavery | Leave A Comment »
Yellow Fever Fence

What: Repeated yellow fever outbreaks led to quarantines and a fence
When: 1822
Where: Financial District, Manhattan
Jul 31, 2011 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: Carlisle Street, epidemic, Marine Hospital, Rector Street, Trinity Place, Washington Square Park, yellow fever | Leave A Comment »
Cold Blood

What: A discovery by physician Charles R. Drew enabled blood to be stored for a year, instead of the usual seven days. The finding had huge importance during the World War II.
When: 1938
Where: Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital, Manhattan
Sep 13, 2010 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine, Washington Heights/Inwood | Tags: blood, Charles R. Drew, Columbia University, Plasma for Britain, Red Cross, World War II | Leave A Comment »
Infamous Lung Block

What: A tenement rife with tuberculosis that was eventually razed
When: Early 1900s
Where: Between Catherine, Cherry, Hamilton and Market streets on the Lower East Side in Manhattan
Sep 08, 2010 | Categories: All stories, Early 20th Century (1898-1945), Health & Medicine, Lower East Side | Tags: Department of Health, Ernest Poole, Hermann A. Biggs, immigrants, Lung Block, tuberculosis | Leave A Comment »
Rural TB Retreat

What: The 25-bed Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids
When: 1884
Where: 84 Street and York Avenue
May 16, 2010 | Categories: All stories, Consolidation (1855-1897), Health & Medicine, Upper East Side | Tags: Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, sanitarium, tuberculosis | Leave A Comment »