MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL - Key Persons
Dr. James Jackson and Dr. John Collins Warren were among the foremost proponents of this plan. So committed were they to the idea that a general hospital in Boston was a necessity, the two physicians penned a letter in August 1810 to their rich and equally socially invested friends. The letter implored them to remember that "When in distress, every man becomes our neighbour." In early 1811 the Massachusetts legislature granted a charter for the incorporation of Massachusetts General Hospital and fundraising proceeded, with donations ranging from 25 cents to $20,000, and including such unusual gifts as a 273-pound sow.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Ladies Visiting Committee
The Edward P. Lawrence Center for Quality and Safety was established in 2007 to foster quality and safety initiatives at MGH and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization.
The department is named after Edward P. Lawrence, Esq., chair of the MGH Board of Trustees from 1999 to 2008, a steadfast advocate for the ongoing promotion of quality and safety across the hospital. During his tenure, he championed quality and safety efforts and encouraged quantifiable results in patient-focused areas.
Lawrence's service to the MGH is a family tradition. His grandmother, Marion Lee Lawrence, was a longtime member of the Ladies Visiting Committee and served as chair of the committee before her death in 1935. Lawrence House, located at the entrance to the hospital on North Grove Street, was named for his uncle, John E. Lawrence, who served also as chair of the MGH Board of Trustees and was an honorary trustee and generous supporter of the hospital.
The museum at MGH is named in honor of Paul S. Russell, MD, a renowned MGH surgeon. Born in Chicago in 1925, Dr. Russell received his medical degree from the University of Chicago Medical School in 1947, and his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, culminating in being named chief resident in Surgery in 1956. From 1954 to 1955, while on a leave of absence, he elected to study with Sir Peter Medawar in London, where he began investigating problems in transplantation biology, at that time an obscure field.
In 1962, after working for several years at Columbia University School of Medicine in New York City, Dr. Russell returned to MGH as chief of General Surgical Services, a title he would hold until 1968.
In 1963, Dr. Russell instituted a clinical transplantation program at MGH when the hospital performed its first kidney transplant. He has fostered a growing program of research relating to the rapidly advancing field of transplantation biology and has participated in the training of a number of clinicians and scientists from the United States and throughout the world.
In 1968, Dr. Russell founded the Boston Interhospital Organ Bank, and served as the first chairman of its Board of Trustees. Today, the bank has become the New England Organ Bank, the organization that helps coordinate the complexities of identifying, matching and distributing life-saving donor organs in the region. The New England Organ Bank has a central tissue-typing laboratory and 24-hour technicians on call for organ perfusion and tissue typing.
A full-time professor at Harvard Medical School since 1962, and, since 1998, the John Homans Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Harvard and MGH, Dr. Russell was honored with the creation of the Paul S. Russell/Warner Professor of Surgery Professorship at HMS.