The Inevitable Hour: A History of Caring for Dying Patients in America

Acknowledgments

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Many people helped me write this book. My history writing group—Carla Bittel, Janet Farrell Brodie, Sharla Fett, Devra Weber, and Alice Wexler—read draft after draft, making generous yet sharp comments. Richard Abel, Lara Freidenfelds, Sandra Harding, Joanne Leslie, and Steven P. Wallace read individual chapters and provided extremely helpful recommendations. Jacqueline H. Wolf and Janet Golden helped me locate relevant archives. I also appreciate the comments of audiences at the Department of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the annual conference of the American Association for the History of Medicine. I made a second trip to the Barbara Bates Center to confer with Julie Fairman and Joan Lynaugh, receiving invaluable suggestions. Numerous archivists guided me to relevant sources, especially Steven E. Novak, Columbia University Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections; Russell A. Johnson, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA; and Arlene Shaner, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Library, New York Academy of Medicine. I received permissions from the State Archives Division, Kansas Historical Society , to quote from the Martha Farnsworth Collection; the Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton, to quote from oral history interviews; the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne Archives, to quote from the Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Papers; the Manuscript Department, Library, New York Historical Society to quote from the John Moffat Howe Diary and the Sigmund and Margaret Nestor Papers; Columbia University Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections, to quote from the Presbyterian Hospital Patient Records, Elizabeth R. Pritchard, “History of Social Service of Presbyterian Hospital,” and Columbia University, Office of the V.P. for Health Sciences, Central Records; the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, to quote from the viii Acknowledgments Dorothy Smith Dushkin Papers and the Thomas Thompson Trust Records; the Mount Sinai School of Nursing Alumnae Newsletter to quote from the newsletter; Special Collections Research Library, University of Chicago Library, to quote from the John Gunther Papers; the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University, to quote from the Hawthorne Family Papers; the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, to quote from the Frances Fineman Gunther Papers; the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, to quote from a Memorial SloanKettering publication at the Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow; and Marianne P. Brown, Santa Monica, to quote from the Parker Family Letters. Portions of chapter 3 appeared in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2011): 29–56. It was adapted and reprinted with permission by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Jacqueline Wehmueller, Executive Editor of the Johns Hopkins University Press, encouraged this project from the beginning and provided both trenchant and supportive comments as it progressed. Carolyn I. Moser’s meticulous copyediting also improved the manuscript. My children and grandchildren have kept me connected to happier events than those chronicled here. My husband, Rick, has shared my delight in their lives as well as so much more. The Inevitable Hour This page intentionally left blank ...