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HISTORY OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PATHOLOGISTS


From 1928 to 2001

 The following describes history of the society, adapted from the semi-centennial summary contributed by Dr. G.J. Gherardi in July of 1979

 

            The history of the New England Society of Pathologists is a story of people and of their common purposes.

 

            In 1979 two of its original triumvirate of founders: Shields Warren of Boston and Charles F. Branch now of Maine were still living. Dr. Branch recalled the history below to Dr. Gherardi.

 

            While the exact time of conception in 1928 remains shrouded in a measure of mystery, November 7, 1929 goes on record as the date of birth.  It was known then as the Boston Pathological Society.  The founders, however, in their wisdom, chose 1953 as the year best representative of the Society’s twenty-fifth anniversary and had it engraved on the silver hand of the ceremonial gavel.

 

            The first dinner meeting, according to Shields Warren, also included S. Burt Wolbach, Sydney Farber, Timothy Leary, and Granville Bennett.

 

            Dr. Bennett, later Professor of Pathology in Chicago, recalled that “the Society meetings were often held in hospital and medical school laboratories”.  On these occasions, the host laboratory usually provided an exhibit of interesting specimens - and, occasionally, current research.  The programs were heavily seeded with case studies by members of the resident staff.  However, members of the departmental staffs of all levels of seniority were faithful in attendance.

 

            So a pattern of activity was set and has continued to the present day with gradual change in content and format to reflect the changing pattern of teaching, practice and research.

 

            The original name shifted to the New England Pathological Society after ten years (May 26, 1939).

 

            “Somewhere about this time (Dr. Branch continues) due to our interest in a small but very active (Interurban Pathological Club) and other similar interests, we finally did get together on establishing our present Society.  Quite logically - for every conceivable reason - S. Burt Wolbach had to be the first president and he in turn (was) followed by Tim Leary.  From there on in, all of the boys in town who had any substantial teaching interest or responsibilities came into the fold and the “club” prospered”

 

            In the forties the loosely combined forces of the top-level pathologists of the North-East coast met alternately in Boston, New Haven, New York, and as far as Philadelphia, numbering among them the greater names in pathology of our neighbors to the South (T.B. Mallory, Alan R. Moritz, Harry Greene, Averill Liebow, Robert Thomas, H.M. Zimmerman, Caspar Burn,William Dock, Jacob Furth, William Von Glahn, Irving Grael, Jean Oliver, C.P. Rhoads, Maurice Richter, Hans Smetana, John G. Kidd, Philip Custer, Baldwin Lucke, Virgil Moon, Stanley Reimann, Lawrence Smith, Robert A. Moore, Henry Pinkerton, Paul Rosahn, and Robert Tennant).

 

            The local Boston Group became better organized with officers including the better known personages of the times and changed its name at the quarter-century mark, on March 18, 1954, to the New England Society of Pathologists.

 

            So it happened that after an initial phase of amorphousness, of search for identity, and of nomadism, the N.E.S.P convened to celebrate its 25th anniversary in May, 1954, at Poland Spring in Maine, a felicitous playground for millionaires where limpid waters flow timeless and free from the ground.  Some fifty-six people were present mostly from the Northeast, but from as far afield as Chicago, Illinois, and London, England - and it was at this meeting that the F.B. Mallory Ceremonial Gavel, the only concrete artifact symbolic of the Society, was dedicated (below).  This is fashioned of true cedars of Lebanon now largely depleted by use in building the ancient fleets of the middle east, and bound with a silver ferule appropriately inscribed.  The president keeps it and passes it on to his successor.

 

 

 

 

            Shortly after this celebration, The Poland Spring House perished in a great fire - nothing remains of it but a parking lot - but the clear waters continued to be bottled and sold throughout the world.  Similarly, the Society’s common purposes continued to bear fruit at meetings which had first shifted from hospital to hospital but later, in the early ‘60’s, tended to settle to a steady state at the Boston Museum of Science. In 2001 the venue was moved to the East Campus of the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center. The Society currently sponsors 5 educational programs yearly, organized by the Executive Committee, composed of the President, President-Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary. However, as with most successful societies, the unflagging dedication of an unofficial “president” is the critical ingredient for a smooth operation, and for many years this has been in the form of the Executive Secretary, Ms. Edie Hurney of Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center.

 

The New England Society of Pathologists today continues its avowed purpose “to foster and maintain through education and research the highest standards in practice of pathology and clinical laboratory services; to maintain the dignity and welfare of pathology as a specialty” and, in this effort, it has encouraged and supported the birth, growth, and development of the New England Pathology Residents Society. It is sustained however, by its members, who with Lucretius believe that “it helps to seek pure fountainheads and to drink copiously from them” (Juvat integros accedere Fontes atque haurire - from de Perum Naturae).