Massachusetts General Hospital

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Massachusetts General Hospital

Mass General Brigham

The front entrance of Massachusetts General Hospital

Wikimedia | © OpenStreetMap
 Geography

Location 55 Fruit Street, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

42°21′46.10″N 71°04′07.07″WCoordinates:  42°
Coordinates
21′46.10″N 71°04′07.07″W

Organization

Funding Non-profit hospital

Type Teaching

Affiliated Harvard Medical School

university

Services

Emergency Level I Trauma Center and Level I Pediatric Trauma

department Center[1]

Beds 999

Helipads

Helipad FAA LID: 0MA1[2]
Number Length Surface
ft m
H1 60 18 Asphalt

History

Opened 1811[3]

Links

Website www.massgeneral.org

giving.massgeneral.org

Lists Hospitals in Massachusetts

Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and

largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West
End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in
the United States and has a capacity of 999 beds. [4] With Brigham and Women's
Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Mass General Brigham (formerly
known as Partners HealthCare), the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts General Hospital conducts the largest hospital-based research
program in the world, with an annual research budget of more than $1 billion in 2019.
It is currently ranked as the #6 best hospital in the United States by U.S. News &
World Report.[5]
In November 2017, The Boston Globe ranked MGH the fifth best place to work out of
Massachusetts companies with over 1,000 employees. [6]

Contents

 1History
o 1.1Early use of anesthesia
o 1.2First successful replantation of a severed limb
 2Facilities and current operations
 3Massachusetts General Hospital for Children
o 3.1Awards
 4The Mass General Research Institute
 5Transportation
 6Second opinions
 7Affiliated institutions
 8Awards and recognition
o 8.1Nobel laureates
o 8.2Rankings
 9Controversies
 10Educational units
 11See also
 12References
 13External links

History[edit]
Further information: Massachusetts General Hospital, Bulfinch Building

From the upper:

The Bulfinch Building as it appeared in 1941, including the Ether Dome.
The Bulfinch Building: State of the Art from the Start.

Founded in 1811,[3] the original hospital was designed by the famous American

architect Charles Bulfinch.[7] It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States;
only Pennsylvania Hospital (1751) and NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital's
predecessor New York Hospital (1771) are older.[3] John Warren, Professor of
Anatomy and Surgery at Harvard Medical School, spearheaded the move of the
medical school to Boston. Warren's son, John Collins Warren, a graduate of
the University of Edinburgh Medical School, along with James Jackson, led the
efforts to start the Massachusetts General Hospital, which was initially proposed in
1810 by Rev. John Bartlett, the Chaplain of the Almshouse in Boston. Because all
those who had sufficient money were cared for at home, Massachusetts General
Hospital, like most hospitals that were founded in the 19th century, was intended to
care for the poor.[8] A 30-year-old sailor was the first patient admitted to the hospital
on September 3, 1821.[9] During the mid-to-late 19th century, Harvard Medical School
was located adjacent to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Walter J. Dodd established the radiology department at the hospital. From just after
the discovery of x-rays in 1895, until his early death in 1916 from metastatic cancer
caused by multiple radiation cancers he oversaw the radiology department. He also
underwent over 50 surgical procedures at the hospital to treat his radiation injuries,
from skin grafts to amputations.[10]
The first American hospital social workers were based in the hospital. [11]
The hospital's work with developing specialized computer software systems for
medical use in the 1960s led to the development of the MUMPS programming
language, which stands for "Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-
Programming System," an important programming language and database system
heavily used in medical applications such as patient records and billing. A major
patient database system called File Manager, which was developed by the Veterans
Administration (now the Department of Veterans' Affairs), was created using this
language.
Early use of anesthesia[edit]

Monument in Boston commemorating Morton's demonstration of ether's anesthetic use

It was in the Ether Dome of MGH in October 1846,[7] that a local dentist, William

Thomas Green Morton, was invited to perform a public demonstration of the
administration of inhaled ether to produce insensibility to pain during surgery.
[7]
 Several years prior, Dr. Crawford Long of Danielsville, Georgia had given ether for
surgery, but hi