Archives and Rare Books

A Hospital Food Revolution

Marian Sizelove and Joyce Gibbons, dieticians at Barnes Hospital, wrote in 1949 that “One of the age old complaints of hospital patients is that the hot foods [they are served] are not hot and that the cold foods are not cold.” Frank Bradley, director of Barnes Hospital from 1939-1962, worked with the hospital dieticians to  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Santa Claus in the Operating Room

In 1930, Vilray P. Blair, MD, the founder of the plastic surgery program at Washington University School of Medicine, was planning his new operating room in the surgical wing of Barnes Hospital. Blair was world-renowned for his work on the most difficult cases, and still did a considerable amount of surgeries on children under local anesthetic. Many of the children brought into the operating room awake were terrified. He hoped to find a way to comfort them and help them relax during the operations.

Archives and Rare Books

Monkey Business at the Medical Center

On a fall day in September 1972, the medical campus was on high alert for an escaped research patient.  A small rhesus macaque somehow broke loose from his quarters on the tenth floor of McMillan Hospital.  Now free to wander around on his own, this clever monkey was able to climb outside through an open window.