City, where he oversaw the building of the United States’ first pathology
laboratory, at Bellevue Hospital. This new discipline required the latest
microscopes and their associated tools, chemicals, and supplies, as well as
organized morgues and structured protocols to imitate the very latest in
German pathology.
Welch, the luminary in his field in the city, was a celebrated educator
among the ambitious medical students looking to supplement their
learning. Welch’s intelligence and unsurpassed training greatly
accentuated his social standing, but it was his congeniality, borne from a
household of generations of Connecticut country physicians, that endeared
him to students and patients. Welch’s father was “close to the people not
only as their medical adviser but also as their true friend and counselor.”^2
The short and pudgy Welch was tapped as a member of Skull and Bones at
Yale University (class of 1870), and would forever enjoy the company of
colleagues at clubs, dining halls, and home parlors.
In September 1880, William Stewart Halsted, a commanding and
vivacious New Yorker returned home from his own European postgraduate
tour of duty, ready to claw and climb and outwork every other surgeon in
the city. Where Welch had been tutored by the finest pathologists on the
Continent, this former Yale football player had been inculcated by the
leading surgeons in Vienna and was an enlightened Listerian. Halsted, son
of a successful merchant, would lead one of the most remarkable lives in
American history, starting with a stint as a surgeon at Roosevelt Hospital
and as an anatomy demonstrator at Physicians & Surgeons.
It took little time for Dr. Halsted to make an impact in New York. His
enthusiasm, expertise, and panache made an immediate impression; his
groundbreaking methods and sheer brilliance fortified his status as one of
the medical men of the future, and his zeal led to appointments at multiple
hospitals around Manhattan in an era where horse-drawn carriages were
the mode of transportation. Halsted’s steel-blue eyes, cosmopolitan
manners, and impeccable wardrobe, together with his tony Madison
Square address, cemented his reputation as a cultivated physician in a
specialty that only recently had risen above the level of derision.
One of Halsted’s first innovations was to organize an informal evening
of medical didactics for the P&S students. Held several times a week, the
“quiz” was typically held in his home office in his 25th Street residence,^3
and the teaching duties were shared among the young stars of the medical