Memorial's Milestone

With his spectacles down to the tip of his nose and mischief in his eyes, Professor James Ewing of Manhattan's Memorial Hospital sat slouched at the Waldorf-Astoria's long banquet table one evening last week. He and 400 others were saluting the semicentennial of Memorial, first exclusive cancer hospital in the U S., second in the world.* At the speakers' table were, among others, President Dean Lewis of the American Medical Association; President Livingston Farrand of Cornell University; Harry Pelham Robbins of Manhattan's Empire Trust Co., who presided; Lucius Nathan Littauer, glovemaking benefactor; William Henry Donner, grandfather of President Roosevelt's Grandson William Donner Roosevelt; Dr. Clarence Cook Little, director of the American Society for the Control of Cancer. President Roosevelt sent a message of good wishes to "Memorial Hospital [whose] human clinical research and service in the field of cancer and allied diseases have made the whole country its debtor." President Roosevelt's message summed up the attitude of the congregation in the Waldorf-Astoria that evening. There has never been any valid criticism against Memorial Hospital since Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton Halleck Cullum, granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, founded the institution as a protest against those who considered cancer a vile, shameful disease. Mrs. Cullum laid the cornerstone of Memorial Hospital's first building at 106th Street and Central Park West, and died of cancer before the structure was finished. She is "St. Elizabeth of Hungary'' in one of Memorial's stained glass chapel windows. Mrs. Cullum's cousin and co-founder Mrs. John Jacob Astor also died of cancer shortly after her husband gave Memorial $225,000. The late President James Douglas of Phelps Dodge Corp. gave altogether $600,000 and 3 1/2 gms. of radium. Edward Stephen Harkness gave $250,000 to buy 4 gms. more. Memorial today has 81 gms., largest supply in the U. S. General Electric has loaned a 700,000-volt x-ray machine whose radiations approximate radium's. The hospital has two 200,000-volt x-ray machines and several smaller ones. An x-ray unit invented by the late Dr. Arthur C. Heublein, which allows the entire body to be flooded by x-rays for long periods, the hospital stopped using last year for lack of money. In 1902 Memorial Hospital acquired the first cancer research fund in the U. S. --$100,000 from Mrs. Collis P. Huntington, relict of Southern Pacific R. R.'s president. Since 1927 John Davison Rockefeller Jr. has been giving the hospital $60,000 a year. But all hospitals need money. Memorial has handled 60,000 patients during its 50 years, of whom 20,000 have been unable to pay for service. But the hospital never turns away a cancer case. That situation and the constant stimulus of Dr. James Ewing keeps a large staff humping at Memorial. Many of his good old associates are dead--Dr. Heublein who invented and financed the x-ray bath; Dr. Henry H. Janeway who pioneered the use of x-rays and radium for cancer, and died of the disease; Dr. Burton James Lee, who showed how radium could best be used in cancer of the breast and who died last year holding the important clinical directorship of Memo rial. Their deaths leave Memorial more than ever a Dr. James Ewing institution. But he is by no means without able associates. Well-beloved Dr. William Bradley Coley, 72, who has probably written more on cancer of the bones than any other U. S. surgeon, retired last year after 40 years as Memorial's senior attending surgeon, but retains his place on the board of managers. His able young son Bradley Lancaster Coley has succeeded him as an associate surgeon in charge of Memorial's bone department. Dr. Frank Earl Adair is the energetic specialist on mammary cancer. Dr. Benjamin Stockwell Barringer looks after the urological cases. Dr. George Thomas Pack heads the gastric service. Dr. William Patrick Healy is gynecologist. Dr. Lloyd Freeman Graver has charge of cancer-like diseases, such as Hodgkin's.

*London's Middlesex Hospital is older (1792).

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