Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan)

History

As U.S. cities grew more crowded in the mid-19th century, philanthropist Sampson Simson (1780-1857) founded a hospital to address the needs of New York's rapidly growing Jewish immigrant community. It was the second Jewish hospital in the United States. At the time of its founding in 1852, other hospitals in New York City discriminated against Jews by not hiring them and preventing them from being treated in their wards.

The Jews' Hospital in the City of New York, as it was then called, was built on 28th Street in Manhattan, between 7th and 8th Avenues, on land donated by Simson; it opened two years before Simson's death. Four years later, it was unexpectedly filled to capacity with soldiers from the Civil War.

The Jews' Hospital felt the effects of the escalating Civil War in other ways, as staff doctors and board members were called into service: Dr. Israel Moses served four years as lieutenant colonel in the 72nd; Joseph Seligman had to resign as a member of the board of directors, as he was increasingly called upon by President Lincoln for advice on the country's growing financial crisis.

The Draft Riots of 1863 again strained the resources of the new hospital, as draft inequities and a shortage of qualified men increased racial tensions in New York City. As the Jews' Hospital struggled to tend to the many wounded, outside its walls over 100 men, and children were killed in the riots.

More and more, the Jews' Hospital was finding itself an integral part of the general community. In 1866, to reflect this new-found role, it changed its name. In 1872, the hospital moved uptown to the east side of Lexington Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets.

Now called The Mount Sinai Hospital, the institution forged relationships with many physicians who made contributions to medicine, including Henry N. Heineman, Frederick S. Mandelbaum, Bernard Sachs, Charles A. Elsberg, Emanuel Libman, and, most significantly, Abraham Jacobi, known as the father of American pediatrics and a champion of construction at the hospital's new site on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1904.

The hospital established a school of nursing in 1881. Created by Alma deLeon Hendricks and a small group of women, the Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses was taken over by the hospital in 1895. In 1923, the name was changed to the Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing. This school closed in 1971 after graduating 4,700 nurses—all women except one man in the last class. An active alumnae association continues.

The early 20th century had the population of New York City explode. That, coupled with many new discoveries at Mount Sinai (including significant advances in blood transfusions and the first endotracheal anesthesia apparatus), meant that Mount Sinai's pool of doctors and experts was in increasing demand. A $1.35 million expansion of the 1904 hospital site (equivalent to over $30 million in 2008) raced to keep pace with demand. The opening of the new buildings was delayed by the advent of World War I. Mount Sinai responded to a request from the United States Army Medical Corps with the creation of Base Hospital No.3. This unit went to France in early 1918 and treated 9,127 patients with 172 deaths: 54 surgical and 118 medical, the latter due mainly to influenza and pneumonia.

Two decades later, with tensions in Europe escalating, a committee dedicated to finding placements for doctors fleeing Nazi Germany was founded in 1933. With the help of the National Committee for the Resettlement of Foreign Physicians, Mount Sinai Hospital became a new home for a large number of émigrés. When World War II broke out, Mount Sinai was the first hospital to throw open its doors to Red Cross nurses' aides; the hospital trained many in its effort to reduce the nursing shortage in the States. Meanwhile, the president of the medical board, George Baehr, M.D., was called by President Roosevelt to serve as the nation's Chief Medical Director of the Office of Civilian Defense.

These wartime roles were eclipsed, however, when the men and women of Mount Sinai's 3rd General Hospital set sail for Casablanca, eventually setting up a 1,000-bed hospital in war-torn Tunisia. Before moving to tend to the needs of soldiers in Italy and France, the 3rd General Hospital had treated more than 5,000 wounded soldiers.

In the decades following World War II, Mount Sinai has continued its efforts to expand its usefulness to medicine and its communities. In 1963, the hospital created a medical school, and in 1968 welcomed the first students of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The 1980s had a $500 million hospital expansion, including the construction of the Guggenheim Pavilion, the first medical facility designed by I.M. Pei; the faculty has made significant contributions to gene therapy, cardiology, immunotherapy, organ transplants, cancer treatments, and minimally invasive surgery.

Writing for The Boston Globe on 14 October 2007, Scott Allen reported the issue of patient abuse and problems with human resources management at Mount Sinai by Dr. Jack M. Gorman who was Department Chairman of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai. Allen stated that; "... officials at McLean learned that Gorman had, like so many patients at the renowned psychiatric hospital, attempted suicide. But their initial sympathy for a sick man turned to horror when they learned, from a legal document delivered in mid-May, why he had taken such a desperate measure. The married father of two had brought a shameful secret with him to Massachusetts: He had engaged in a long-term sexual relationship with a New York patient... Gorman, 55, inspired great hope when McLean and Partners announced that they had lured him away from New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine in October 2005... It was Gorman's decision to contact the New York Board of Professional Medical Conduct that finally brought the episode to public attention. Earlier this month, the board finally acted on what Gorman told them, posting on its website that his medical license had been indefinitely suspended for 'inappropriate sexual contact' with a patient."

The issue of human resources management between nurses and doctors at Mount Sinai hospital was reported by Jose Martinez on April 20, 2010 in the New York Daily News. As stated by Martinez: "A Catholic nurse was forced to assist in an abortion at Mount Sinai Medical Center over her strenuous objections, a lawsuit filed Friday charges. Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, who works in the operating room at the Manhattan hospital, contends that her boss ordered her to assist in the May 2009 abortion of a 22-week-old fetus or face charges of 'insubordination and patient abandonment.'"

In January 2013 David L. Reich was the first openly gay medical doctor named Interim President of Mount Sinai Hospital as reported by The New York Times; in October of the same year he was named President. On November 24, 2002, The New York Times reported the commitment ceremony of Reich to Keith Loren Marran stating that: "Keith Loren Marran Jr. and Dr. David Louis Reich are to celebrate their partnership today with a commitment ceremony at the Bloom Ballroom in Manhattan. Judge Paul G. Feinman of New York City Civil Court in Manhattan will officiate."

James McKinley writing for The New York Times reported abuse issue investigations dealing with human resources management at Mount Sinai Hospital on March 24, 2016 when a doctor was brought to court for abuse of several patients. As stated by McKinley: "A former doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan was arraigned on Thursday on charges of sexually abusing four women who came into the emergency room there, touching their breasts for no medical reason and, in one case, drugging, groping and masturbating on a patient. The physician, Dr. David H. Newman, pleaded not guilty before Justice Michael J. Obus in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to one count of first-degree sexual abuse and four counts of third-degree sexual abuse. He remains free on bail. 'Four young women who came to the hospital for medical treatment were sexually abused by the very doctor entrusted with their care,' the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement."

Dennis S. Charney, the current Dean of Mount Sinai, graduated from medical school at Penn State in 1977 and completed his residency in Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. A fellowship in Biological Psychiatry was completed at the Connecticut Medical Health Center. Charney was shot and wounded as he left a deli in his home town of Chappaqua, New York, early on the morning of August 29, 2016. Hengjun Chao, a former Mount Sinai faculty member who had been fired for cause in 2010, was arrested and charged with attempted murder. As reported by Jonah Bromwich in the New York Times, "A former faculty member at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who had been fired shot the school’s dean outside a popular deli in Chappaqua, N.Y., on Monday, apparently in an act of revenge, the authorities said... Mount Sinai officials confirmed that the dean, Dr. Dennis S. Charney, 65, of Chappaqua, was one of the victims. The name of the other victim was not released. 'This is an extremely disturbing event,' Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, the chief executive of the Mount Sinai Health System, said in a statement. 'Fortunately, Dr. Charney’s injuries are not life-threatening, and we expect he will fully recover.'"

Medical firsts

A significant number of diseases were first described at Mount Sinai Hospital in the last 160+ years, including Brill's disease, Buerger's disease, Churg-Strauss disease, collagen disease, Crohn's disease, eosinophilic granuloma of bone, glomus jugulare tumor, Libman-Sacks endocarditis, Moschcowitz disease, polymyalgia rheumatica, and Tay-Sachs disease.

Other "firsts" include:

Timeline of other significant events

Noted benefactors