In 1810, the United States could boast of only two general hospitals, the Pennsylvania Hospital (founded in 1756) and the New York Hospital (founded in 1791). Locally, the marine hospital in Charlestown tended to the needs of sailors and the Boston Dispensary addressed the ambulatory care of paupers, but no New England facility in the early nineteenth century provided round the clock medical care to members of the general public.

Mass General, in its first year of operation became the first teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It has since been the scene of many changes, much expansion, and more advances in medicine than can easily be enumerated.  As the first hospital to treat the general public, today, it continues to be a center for advances in medical research, which is key to Team Draft’s primary mission to raise research funds for lung cancer research.

Among the highlights in Mass General Hospital’s storied history: the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia by William T.G. Morton and John Collins Warren (1846), the identification of appendicitis by Reginald Fitz (1886), the establishment of the first medical social service by Richard Cabot and Ida Cannon (1905), and the first replantation of a severed arm by a surgical team led by Ronald Malt (1962).

For more information on Mass General Hospital’s history, please visit: http://www.massgeneral.org/history/narrativehistory/