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…
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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…
Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants
The increase of American population plus general affluence following World War II caused an acute shortage of doctors, especially in rural communities, and an escalation of medical costs. The University Read more…
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Located in Memphis, Tennessee, St. Jude Children’s Hospital is internationally famous for its tight focus on treating and finding cures for catastrophic diseases of childhood—cancer especially. Nearly 8,000 young patients Read more…
Kidney Transplants and Dialysis
In 1940, an estimated $45 million was spent on biomedical research in the U.S., only $3 million of it from the federal government. World War II accelerated government health research, Read more…
DNA
In 1944, three scientists working at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research proved that it was the threadlike fibers of DNA, present in all cells, that were the chemical basis Read more…
Eradicating Polio
Polio is one of the most wounding viruses in history, and reached pandemic proportions in the early twentieth century. In America at that time it killed more people every year Read more…
Population Control Movement
As early as the 1920s, some notable philanthropists were strong backers of measures to reduce births among poor individuals. John Rockefeller Senior, Junior, and the Third were all strong supporters Read more…
Cardiac Catheterization
Surgeries to alleviate congenital heart diseases began to advance rapidly in the 1940s and 1950s. Many of the techniques for detecting and diagnosing heart problems, however—life histories, physical examination, fluoroscopy, Read more…
Kinsey Reports
Most of the funding for Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the controversial book on sexual practice published by insect biologist Alfred Kinsey in 1948, was funded by the Rockefeller Read more…
Sloan Kettering Institute
General Motors vice president Charles Kettering is most famously known for his automotive inventions, such as the first electrical starter motor and leaded gasoline, and the 185 patents he held. Read more…
The Lasker Prize
In 1942, pioneering advertising executive Albert Lasker and his wife, Mary, established a foundation to champion medical research. Their first major project (and the primary work of their foundation, still) Read more…