The New York Academy of Medicine (the Academy) is a

health policy Health policy can be defined as the "decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific healthcare goals within a society".World Health Organization''Health Policy'' accessed 22 March 2011(Web archive)/ref> According to the ...

and advocacy organization founded in 1847 by a group of leading

New York metropolitan area The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass, at , and one of the list of most populous metropolitan areas, most populous urban agg ...

physicians A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

reform. The early leaders of the academy were invested in the reform movements of the day and worked to improve public health by focusing on the living conditions of the poor. In 1866, the academy was instrumental in the establishment of the

Metropolitan Board of Health The New York City Metropolitan Board of Health was the first modern municipal public health authority in the United States. It was founded in 1866 by the New York City Common Council at a suggestion by the New York Academy of Medicine, following a c ...

, the first modern municipal public health authority in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and the precursor of today's

Department of Health A health department or health ministry is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. Subnational entities, such as states, counties and cities, often also operate a health department of their ow ...

. In recent years the academy has functioned as an effective advocate in public health reform, as well as a major center for

health education Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and r ...

. As of 2016, the academy will celebrate its 169th year. The academy's work now focuses on advancing urban health in New York City and around the world. Today, the academy has over three-thousand

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s, that include doctors,

nurses Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health ca ...

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

administrators, and

professionals A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

in all fields dedicated to maintaining and improving health.

History

Founding

The New York Academy of Medicine was founded on January 6, 1847. It began on December 8, 1846 with a notice being published in newspapers, requesting the city's doctors to meet three days later at the

Lyceum of Natural History The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

. It asked for cooperation of medical professionals in elevating the profession's character, advancing its interests, creating medical facilities, promoting harmony among members, and offering means of mutual improvement. The three signatories were doctors

Valentine Mott Valentine Mott (August 20, 1785April 26, 1865) was an American surgeon. Life Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, New York. He graduated at Columbia College, studied under Sir Astley Cooper in London, and also spent a winter in Edinburgh. A ...

, president of the

New York University School of Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

, Alexander H. Stevens, president of the

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is the graduate medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded i ...

, and Isaac Wood, president of the Medical Society of the City and County of New York. John Stearns, later first president of the academy, was made chairman for the first meeting. In 1854, the academy was divided into sections by medical specialty or scientific discipline. Early sections included Theory and Practice, Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, Anatomy, Surgery, and Chemistry. In 1939, the academy prepared

Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...

Fiorello LaGuardia Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (; born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, ; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the House of Representatives and served as the 99th Mayor of New York City from ...

LaGuardia Commission The LaGuardia Committee was the first in-depth study into the effects of smoking cannabis in the United States. An earlier study, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, was conducted by the colonial authorities in British India in 1893–94. The repor ...

report, which when released in 1944 infuriated

Harry Anslinger Harry may refer to: TV shows * ''Harry'' (American TV series), a 1987 American comedy series starring Alan Arkin * ''Harry'' (British TV series), a 1993 BBC drama that ran for two seasons * ''Harry'' (talk show), a 2016 American daytime talk show ...

and his campaign against

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the academy made plans to sell its building at 10 West 44th Street in order to build an addition to its building on 15 West 43rd Street. A man named Louis Sherry (of

Sherry's ''Sherry's'' was a restaurant in New York City. It was established by Louis Sherry in 1880 at 38th Street and Sixth Avenue (Manhattan), Sixth Avenue. In the 1890s, it moved to West 37th Street (New York City), 37th Street, near Fifth Avenue. By 18 ...

hotel and restaurant) made an offer on the property, which the academy reluctantly accepted around 1918. Sherry's offer included renting the building for $5,000 per year for ten years with the option to purchase the property outright for $100,000 within five years. While the academy originally paid $120,000 for the property, their special advisory Finance Committee urged them to take the deal. A peripheral fallout of this agreement was that the academy's live-in janitor, Felix Wesstrom, lost his living quarters. To compensate him for the loss, the academy increased his monthly salary by $30.

Architecture

2015 New York Academy of Medicine 3 East 103rd Street entrance

In 1926, the Academy moved to a new six-story building designed by

York and Sawyer York and Sawyer was an American architectural firm active between 1898 and 1949. The firms' work is exemplary of Beaux-Arts architecture as it was practiced in the United States. The partners Edward York (July 23, 1863– December 30, 1928) and ...

in an

eclectic style Eclecticism is a kind of mixed style in the fine arts: "the borrowing of a variety of styles from different sources and combining them" . Significantly, Eclecticism hardly ever constituted a specific style in art: it is characterized by the fact th ...

; including touches of the

Byzantine Revival Neo-Byzantine architecture (also referred to as Byzantine Revival) was a revival movement, most frequently seen in religious, institutional and public buildings. It incorporates elements of the Byzantine style associated with Eastern and Orthod ...

and Lombardian Romanesque styles. The building is at East 103rd Street at the corner of

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

, across from

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...

in the

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, F ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Initial funding for the new building came from the Carnegie Corporation, approximately one million dollars towards the building, and the Rockefeller Foundation, providing 1.25 million dollars for an endowment.

Exterior

The building's exterior uses a combination of varieties of limestone and sandstone. The main entrance, at 103rd Street, uses a series columns with Romanesque caps, topped with statues of lions. The doors are ornate bronze with floral designs and small figures of

Asclepius Asclepius (; grc-gre, Ἀσκληπιός ''Asklēpiós'' ; la, Aesculapius) is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Religion in ancient Greece, Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology. He is the son of Apollo and Coronis (lover of ...

, god of medicine and physicians, and

Hygieia Hygieia is a goddess from Greek, as well as Roman, mythology (also referred to as: Hygiea or Hygeia; ; grc, Ὑγιεία or , la, Hygēa or ). Hygieia is a goddess of health ( el, ὑγίεια – ''hugieia''), cleanliness and hygiene. Her ...

, daughter of Asclepius and goddess of health. The two gods are also carved into the entranceway's tympanum, attended by dogs, symbolizing vigilance and keeping death and illness away. The exterior also features many Latin inscriptions from notable authors, including

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

Hippocrates Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of ...

Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the ''Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...

Seneca the Younger Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in ...

, and

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

. The first floor windows have exterior ornamental bronze grills, decorated in a Romanesque design. Those windows'

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. In the case of w ...

s have figures of gods and fauna symbolic of medicine and additional Latin inscriptions.

Interior

The building's design includes many decorative elements that evoke health and the history of the medicine. In addition to the exterior designs, other animals feature as bronze insets of the Levanto marble main lobby floor such as the goat (symbolizing lusty, reproductive power), snakes (the symbol of the god Asclepius, signifying long life and rejuvenation), rooster (emblem of fatherhood and restorer of health), goose (emblem of motherhood), and the mandrake root (believed in folklore to have curative properties). The lobby floor also has a variegated marble mosaic pattern and white Traniville marble border. The walls are made of Mankato marble, and the ceiling is square-beamed with hand-painted Arabesque designs of fauna symbolic of medicine.

Library

New York Academy of Medicine Rare Book Reading Room

The Academy Library is home to one of the most significant collections of medicine and public health and is open to the general public. It was first opened in 1847 when the academy first opened, but was not open to the public until 1878. The library includes about 550,000 volumes and original writings by

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

and a prototype of

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

dentures Dentures (also known as false teeth) are prosthetic devices constructed to replace missing teeth, and are supported by the surrounding soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. Conventional dentures are removable (removable partial denture or ...

, constructed from actual teeth that were donated. The library is part of the New York Academy of Medicine's Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health and also includes the Coller Rare Book Reading Room. The library's historical materials are conserved in the Gladys Brooks Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory. Under President Walter Belknap James (served 1915-1918), in May 1918, the Library Council decided to build an addition on its building at 15 West 43rd Street and, consequently, to sell its property at 10 West 44th Street. Around this same time, the academy increased its number of fellows from 1,200 to 1,300. There was also a requirement for the fellows to be in practice for five years (as opposed to its previous requirements of three years).

Wartime years

During World War I, the library (at its 15 West 43rd Street location) opened its doors to aid in wartime efforts. Not only was the library open to all, including soldiers, it also allowed the use of one of its prime spaces, Hosack Hall, for events related to the war, and additional rooms within the building for Medical Reserve Corps examinations.

Later years

By 1947, the library had 252,000 volumes and was the second-largest medical library in the U.S., after the Surgeon General's Library (now the

National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...

). The library was open to the public, although only fellows and some paid subscribers had borrowing privileges. At the time, the Librarian was Archibald Malloch, who had doubled the collection while Librarian, 1935 to 1949. Janet Doe succeeded him, followed by Gertrude L. Annan. These individuals were regarded by peers as "giants in their field". The library also has a Rare Book Room, which contains rare bibliographic works and medical artifacts, including a collection of cookbooks. In the early 1900s, the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

ceased adding to its own medical collection and donated approximately 22,000 medical works, in 1949, to the New York Academy of Medicine. This led the academy, for a time, to be the only public medical source in the New York metropolitan area.

Holdings

The library holds the

Edwin Smith Papyrus The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical text, named after Edwin Smith who bought it in 1862, and the oldest known surgical treatise on trauma. From a cited quotation in another text, it may have been known to ancient surgeons as t ...

, an ancient Egyptian medical text and the oldest known surgical treatise on

trauma Trauma most often refers to: *Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source *Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event *Traumatic inju ...

. In 1928, the New York Academy of Medicine purchased the collection of

incunable In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pr ...

manuscripts of E.C. Streeter which was exhibited during the

History of Science Society The History of Science Society (HSS) is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It was founded in 1924 by George Sarton, David Eugene Smith, and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, primarily to support the public ...

's meeting held in New York on 28th and 29th December. There were at least 130 books printed before 1501 which had strongly influenced the history of medicine at the time of their publication. Contents to be exhibited were mainly selected by

Arnold C. Klebs Arnold C. Klebs (March 17, 1870 – March 6, 1943) was a Swiss physician who specialized in the study of tuberculosis. Born in Bern, Switzerland, Arnold Klebs, the son of renowned bacteriologist Edwin Klebs, was raised in the presence of an exten ...

. The library also houses the archives of many health-related organizations that serve as primary sources for the history of medical education and practice in New York. The academy produces a website for providing context and search capability to

grey literature Grey literature (or gray literature) is materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (annual, rese ...

through its ''Grey Literature Report'', which is published bimonthly. The resources cited in the ''Grey Literature Report'' are cataloged and indexed using

Medical Subject Headings Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the United States N ...

Awards

Every year since 1929, the academy has rewarded individuals who delivered exceptional contributions. There are currently five categories in these awards: * ''John Stearns Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Medicine''. Awarded since 1992 and named after John Stearns, who was the first president of the academy. * ''Stephen Smith Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Public Health''. Awarded since 2005 and named after Dr. Stephen Smith, who was a pioneer in

. * ''Academy Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Health Policy''. Awarded since 2008. * ''Academy Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Biomedical Science''. The oldest medal of the academy, awarded since 1929. * ''Academy Plaque for Exceptional Service to the Academy''. Awarded since 1952.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1847 establishments in New York (state) Charities based in New York City Byzantine Revival architecture in New York City Companies based in Manhattan Eclectic architecture Education in New York City Libraries in Manhattan Medical associations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in New York City Organizations established in 1847 Romanesque Revival architecture in New York City Medical and health organizations based in New York City Research libraries in the United States