Education: 1841 graduate,\ of Harvard Medical School, also attended Dartmouth and studied in Paris.

Surgeon who was there on October 16, 1846 with the 1st demonstration of ether and was the first to report it- called the most important article in the history of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Published the case of Phineas Gae, who had an iron bar pass through his head during and explosion and survive.  Up until his publication, the medical community doubted the reporting of gage's Vermont country doctor.

Married to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, she heard of James Young Simpson in Scotland using ether for a delivery.  In April, 1847, just months after the demonstration of the use of ether at Mass General and soon after Simpson used it in Scotland for a delivery she summoned Nathan Keep, a physician, dentist and an associate of William T. G. Morton with experience using ether.  He administered ether at her home for the delivery of her 3rd child, Fanny.  Her pain was relieved as the gas was administered for her labor making her the first woman in the U.S. to receive anesthesia for a delivery.  The delivery was performed by her midwife.  The child, born healthy, unfortunately died at 1 year of age. 

Education:  Harvard Medical School 1836 after getting additional training in Paris.

Known as a poet, author as well as physician.

Coined a number of terms including:

"Anesthesia" (didn't invent the word, but recommended that it be used for the state induced by drugs for surgery)

"Boston Brahmin"

"Hub of the Universe (or solar system)"

As a result of his research he determined that Puerperal fever was being carried by the care giver from patient to patient.  His publication: "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever” from 1843 preceded Semmelweis in Vienna, however the theory was not accepted by the medical establishment for decades.

While dean of Harvard Medical School he admitted a woman (Harriot Kezia Hunt) and 3 black men.  Disapproval by the Trustees and a revolt by the students lead to their admission being withdrawn.  Harvard Medical School's first black male graduated in 1869 and the first female in 1949. 

Education: Harvard Medical School 1829, later traveled to Europe to study medicine & geology.

In addition to practicing medicine he served as state geologist for Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

He was involved in a series of bitter conflicts, dragging on over decades.  He discussed the potential use of electromagnetism while on a voage with Samuel Morse and later felt that he should be attributed as the inventor of Morse Code (the Supreme Court disagreed...).  He advised William T.G. Morton about using ether as an agent for anesthesia and fought to be given credit as the inventor of anesthesia after the demonstration of ether at Mass General Hospital in 1846.  He did not prevail.

Later in life he was hospitalized at McLean hospital where he spent his last days.

Education: Apprenticed in Rhode Island, then travelled to Europe where he attended Edinburgh Medical School later graduating from Leiden Medical School in 1780.

He was 1 of 3 original Harvard Medical School professors in 1782, later resigning in 1814 when he objected to the move from Cambridge to Boston.

He was an early advocate for smallpox vaccination. He attempted to maintain a monopoly over the cowpox vaccine, for both financial reasons and to protect the vaccine from incompetent or fraudulent physicians. Waterhouse made the first vaccinations in the United States on four of his children. He commissioned a controlled experiment at the Boston Board of Health in which 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys were exposed to the smallpox virus. The vaccinated boys demonstrated immunity, and both unvaccinated boys succumbed to the disease.

Education: Home schooled followed by apprenticship with the wife of Dr. Mott (she handled his female patients), she opened her own consulting room in 1835 without a medical degree.  At that time there were no legal requirments for practing medicine and no licensing board.  In 1853 she was awarded an honorary degree by the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Her brand of medicine leaned towards rest and the use of herbal remedies. and homeopathic remedies, rejecting the harsher "heroic methods" in favor at the time.

Her response to remarks that women shouldn't practice medicine was "What could be more delicately feminine, more truly womanly, than to take the hand of a sister, afflicted in body and mind, and to show her the cause of her diseases?"

An advocate for women's rights she attended the 1850 National Women's Rights convention in Worcester.  She was also an abolitionist.

Education: Harvard Medical School 1895, interned at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Practicing surgery he instituted Harvard's first Morbidity & Mortality conferences.  Known as a champion of measuring the results of procedures he advocated "End Result Cards" in which patients were followed for a year post operatively.

However, in 1914, the hospital refused his plan for evaluating surgeon competence, and he lost his staff privileges there. Dr. Codman eventually established his own hospital ("End Result Hospital") to pursue the performance measurement and improvement objectives. Dr. Codman made public the end results of his own hospital in a privately published book, A Study in Hospital Efficiency. Of the 337 patients discharged between 1911 and 1916, Dr. Codman recorded and published 123 errors. 

He was also a founder of the the American College of Surgeons and its Hospital Standardization Program which eventually became the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals.

Education: Harvard Medical School 1832

June 1832-1834: Travels to Paris with Oliver Wendell Holmes to study at Ecole de Médecine with Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, renowned physician and promulgator of the “numerical method”

1835-1838: Appointed admitting physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), joins Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), co-founds the Society for Medical Observation, and proposes useful changes to the laws regarding smallpox vaccination

1841-1849: Working through the MMS, promotes laws to make Massachusetts the first state to record public vital records 

1849-1854: founds the “Boston Anti-Man-Hunting League”; and participates in abolitionist demonstrations

1854-1862: Focuses his study on consumption, its prevalence, and communicative potential in relation to environmental conditions

1862-1869: Advocates for an “Ambulance Bill” to improve wartime medical care and sanitary conditions; appointed to the first chair of the Massachusetts Board of Health

Education: Baltimore College of Dental Surgery 1840.

Born in Charlton, MA 1819.  Worked in Hartford, CT with Horace Wells for 3 weeks when Wells dismissed him (Wells later experimented and introduced Nitrous Oxide as an anesthetic, failed in a demo at MGH in 1845).  On September 30, 1846 he published in a local paper that he had used ether for a tooth extraction and Henry Jacob Bigalow arranged for him to demonstrate it at MGH.  On Oct 16, 1846 John Collins Warren partially removed a vascular tumor from the neck of Edward Gilbert Abbott.  News spread quickly with James Robinson in London using it for a tooth extraction on Dec 19, 1846.  James Young Simpson in Scotland used it for a delivery on January 19, 1847.

Morton tried to hide the identity of ether in order to patent it as something different and capitalize on it.  

During the Civil War he served for the North, administering anesthetic for thousands of the wounded.

In 1868 he was riding in a carriage in Central Park when he ran to the lake and jumped in, behavior felt to be precipitated by a stroke.  He died soon after.

Education: Johns Hopkins Medical School 1927  Her early education was hindered by childhood Tb as well as dyslexia and deafness.  Her father tutored her and she excelled.

She wanted to specialize in internal medicine, but the one position available for a woman in that specialization was already taken so she opted for pediatrics and the emerging field of pediatric cardiology.

She pioneered the use of X-Rays and Fluoroscopy in the examination of Babies’ heart and lungs and was very skilled in diagnosis using her fingertips to feel tha heartbeat since her deafness prevented her from using a stethoscope.

She developed a particular interest in children with Tetralogy of Fallot, a heart defect leading to the “Blue Baby Syndrome” due to insufficient oxygen in the baby’s blood.  After careful observation she theorized that an operation to develop a shunt may help and with Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas they developed the operation now known as the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt in 1944. 

In 1962, hearing that Thalidomide may be causing birth defects in Germany, she traveled to Germany, examined some of the children, came to the same conclusion and returned to the US where she advocated for banning the drug during pregnancy.

Education: Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing.

Born to wealth she insisted on leaving home and volunteering in the Civil War.  Despite being blind in 1 eye, having a partial hearing loss and an injured ankle she plunged into her work and rapidly improved conditions in the hospitals that she was at implementing the hygienic practices promoted by Florence Nightingale.

Exhaustion and deteriorating health led her to leave her first post after a few months.  After recovering she moved to St. Louis where she worked.  She later contracted malaria and, again needed to recover.

After the war ended, Parsons returned home and began to raise money to establish a general hospital in Cambridge.  After an initial effort failed her fund raising efforts were successful and Mt. Auburn Hospital was opened in 1884.

Education: 1809 University of Pennsylvania Medical School, later studied in Edinburgh and London.

1812: New England Journal of Medicoine aand Surgery, assistant editor

1819: Dean of Harvard medical School

1832: Establishes Boston Lying In hospital

Eventually accepted Oliver Wendall Holmes theory on the spread of puerperal fever.

Early advocate for the use of anesthesia in cildbirth.  His 1848 Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth helpped to popularize it in the US.