Discovery of Insulin
Though diabetes is one of the most common modern diseases, there was for generations no hope of recovering from it. One merely adopted a radically constricted diet. Or bodily decay Read more…
Refine Search Results
Search Results for:
George Eastman Popularizes Preventive Dental Care
By the time his company Eastman Kodak became a secure juggernaut in the early 1900s, George Eastman was one of the richest men in the world, but he had lost Read more…
Henry Ford Hospital
Henry Ford stood at the center of the manufacturing revolution after he established the Ford Motor Company in 1903. People flooded to Detroit in search of employment, and the swelling Read more…
Social Hygiene Movement
John Rockefeller Jr. poured himself into the philanthropic activities begun by his father, and is responsible for the creation or development of several signature Rockefeller organizations. These include the Rockefeller Read more…
American Cancer Society
In the beginning of the twentieth century, a cancer diagnosis almost certainly meant death. Cancer was such a mortifying subject that doctors sometimes even kept confirmed diagnoses from their patients, Read more…
Rockefeller’s Medical Philanthropy Sprouts 61 Nobel Prizes
John Rockefeller, the son of an itinerant seller of folk medicines, started pouring large sums from his Standard Oil fortune into medical research and treatment long before he founded the Read more…
Modern American Medical Education
Andrew Carnegie did not have a strong personal interest in medicine. He believed in the power of education to promote wealth and well-being in society, though, so when the American Read more…
Eliminating Hookworm in the U.S.
When John Rockefeller announced that he intended to eliminate hookworm disease in the American South, it was an unheard of notion. Indeed, some of the intended beneficiaries were embarrassed and Read more…
A Mass Crusade Against Tuberculosis
In the first decade of the twentieth century, tuberculosis accounted for about 11 percent of all U.S. deaths. About a quarter of all children were afflicted in cities like New Read more…
Peking Union Medical College
The Peking Union Medical College was founded in 1906 by American and British missionary groups. It was a rare outpost of modern medicine in a nation with one of the Read more…
Rockefeller University
In 1901, John Rockefeller founded the first biomedical research institute in the United States. Although he discussed the idea for three years with his scientific adviser, Frederick Gates, it was Read more…
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Upon his death in 1873, Quaker merchant Johns Hopkins bequested $7 million to build a hospital and university. This sum was unprecedented at the time. He wished for the new Read more…
Coeducation in American Medicine
Mary Elizabeth Garrett was the only daughter of American railroad magnate and philanthropist John Garrett. Having inherited $2 million at her father’s passing in 1884, Garrett became one of the Read more…
A Revolutionary Medical Clinic
Benjamin Rush, physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, opened a medical practice in Philadelphia in 1769. In 1786, he established the first free walk-in health clinic in the Read more…
Rescuing the “Sick Poor and Lunaticks”
At a time when Philadelphia was the fastest-growing city in America (and the second-largest English-speaking city in the British Empire), two city benefactors came together to create a hospital (an Read more…
A Dying Sailor Endows the First U.S. Charity Hospital
“Nothing being more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than its hour…I bequeath…a hospital for the sick of the City of New Orleans, without anyone being able to change Read more…
Taking on the Top Cause of Preventable Death
Each year more than 480,000 Americans die of tobacco use—the nation’s largest cause of preventable death, accounting for about one out of every five U.S. deaths according to the Centers Read more…
Red Cross Founded by Clara Barton
Clara Barton first became a public figure during the Civil War, when she began to assist wounded and displaced soldiers and their family members on a quite informal and personal Read more…
Boosting Traditional Architecture
The architecture school at the University of Notre Dame is known, along with the University of Miami, as the finest in the U.S. for the study of classical architecture and Read more…
Saving Consecrated Ground
When John Nau was eight years old, his family visited a Civil War battlefield in Kentucky. Walking the contested land created a yearning in the boy and a fascination with Read more…