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As part of BWH’s BluePrint celebration, BWH Bulletin features this special section to explore the past, present and future of the institution. Throughout 2013, you’ll find a new fun fact, story, photo or tradition in each issue of Bulletin.
For a place with as rich a history as BWH, it is no surprise that our predecessor institutions and individual leaders had unique traditions of their own.
For example, between 1912 and 1939, Henry Christian, MD, the first physician-in-chief of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, had all medical staff and other notable guests sign his tablecloth whenever they came to dinner at his home.
Christian, whose signature appears on the tablecloth pictured below, eventually had each signature embroidered onto the large white tablecloth, which was saved for posterity. That tablecloth, which now resides in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Archives, contains hundreds of signatures, including such names as Harvey Cushing, MD, who is known as the father of neurosurgery.
Though tablecloth-signing has not continued through the present, other traditions have stood the test of time. Chairman of Medicine Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, who currently serves as physician-in-chief, shared one tradition dating back to the early days of the hospital: To have a visiting physician from another medical school serve as BWH’s honorary physician-in-chief for several days each year.
“This rich tradition, much like Dr. Christian’s tablecloth, serves to demonstrate how integrated our academic family of leaders in medicine has been and continues to be,” said Loscalzo.
Chief Medical Officer Stan Ashley, MD, former surgical residency program director, has his own tradition. “I’ve been having the surgical residents to my home for a journal club every other month,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a tablecloth, but maybe we ought to get one.”
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