Mission, Vision, and History
Mission, Vision, and History
HISTORY Our HISTORY In the early 1900s, Boston City Hospital served as a public hospital with over 1,000 beds dispersed across numerous buildings in one square block of the South End. The clinical services were run by faculty from each of the Boston medical schools: Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University. In the 1960s, the City of Boston granted the health services contract to Boston University alone. During this period, the BU School of Medicine lay across the street from BCH and adjacent to Massachusetts Memorial Hospital. Massachusetts Memorial Hospital was a private medical institution that shared close affiliation with Boston University, so much so that it eventually changed its name to University Hospital in the 1970s. Both Boston City Hospital and University Hospital facilitated medical residencies. Some residencies were independent, some were duplicated, and some were integrated, with residents working and receiving training at both hospitals. While our records demonstrate that Boston City Hospital had an anesthesiology training program dating back to the late 1930s, the early history of our specialty at this institution is not well documented prior to the arrival of Dr. Benjamin Kripke . Receiving his MD from Tufts University and having trained in anesthesiology on our medical campus, Dr. Kripke became Director of our Department in 1971.
In 1975, Frederick W. Hehre, MD became the first Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology at Boston University School of Medicine. He is noted for his positions as Chief of Anesthesia at both BCH and University Hospital until his death in 1980, and he was responsible for conceptualizing and integrating the aforementioned system of residents rotating at both hospitals. Dr. Hehre received his MD from Columbia University in 1947 and trained in anesthesiology at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City from 1948-1950, where he worked with esteemed anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar, MD. In 1958, Dr. Hehre became Director of Obstetric Anesthesia at Yale under Dr. Nicholas Greene. Dr. Hehre was a distinguished anesthesiologist who published a broad range of clinical research articles over the course of his career; the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology (SOAP) honors him for his contributions to the field with the Frederick W. Hehre Jr. Memorial Lecture. In 1980, Commissioner of Health for the City of Boston Lewis Pollack began funding for an independent BCH anesthesia department. He hired a separate Chief of Anesthesia in Dean
Crocker, MD, who had been practicing at Boston Children’s Hospital. Pollack also initiated an unaccredited anesthesiology training program for dentists and had a clinical staff composed of non-Board-certified anesthesiologists and dentist anesthetists. At the time, no other organizations had supported training dentists to administer anesthesia for non-dental procedures. In 1982, Dr. Marcelle Willock was recruited to be the Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology at Boston University School of Medicine and Chief of Anesthesiology at University Hospital. She broke barriers and made history by becoming the first woman chairman at the school, as well as the third woman to chair an academic anesthesiology department in the country. Dr. Willock graduated from Howard University College of Medicine in 1962, did her residency at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City under Emanuel Pepper, MD, and had been a member of faculty for both New York University and Columbia University. In addition to this, she had also obtained a master’s in Higher Education from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, making her one of the earliest anesthesiologists to obtain formal training in education.
DR. HEHRE BECOMES FIRST PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF ANESTHESIA AT BU MED SCHOOL
BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL IS FOUNDED
1864
1975
1971
1982 DR. WILLOCK BECOMES FIRST WOMAN OF COLOR TO CHAIR AN ANESTHESIOLOGY DEPARTMENT
DR. KRIPKE BECOMES DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR
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