This year, The New York Academy of Medicine is celebrating more than a century of advancing public health in New York City and State with our 170th Anniversary Discourse & Awards on Thursday, November 2, 2017. This proud tradition began in 1847 with an oration delivered to an audience of 2,500 people at the Broadway Tabernacle by Dr. John W. Francis.

An essential part of the celebration is always the presentation by the evening’s Discourse Speaker. This year, we will hear from Pulitizer-Prize-winning historian David Oshinsky, PhD, author of Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, director of the Division of Medical Humanities and New York University School of Medicine, and a professor of History at New York University. (Edit: view the video of Dr. Oshinsky's talk.)

His extensive investigation into the development of Bellevue, the nation’s first hospital, is much more than the story of an organization, he reveals its hidden history and role in public health and the evolution of New York City. Here, he shares a few surprises about the famous hospital.

Q:What is the biggest misconception about Bellevue?

A: Wherever I speak outside of New York City, the audience pictures Bellevue as a giant, grim, mental hospital—nothing more. This is understandable. Pop culture images of Bellevue as the nation’s most famous mental institution began with the heartbreaking movie moment when Kris Kringle was deemed delusional and packed off to Bellevue in the beloved 1947 film, “Miracle on 34^th Street.”

Famous psychiatric patients, from author Norman Mailer to saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker to John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, have passed through its doors, and a fair number, including Mailer and Allen Ginsberg, have written about their experiences. Movies like Billy Wilder's Academy Award winning "Lost Weekend" have enhanced the image, as have TV shows such as "Barney Miller," "Law & Order," and "Blue Bloods." When I would act up as a kid, my mother used to warn me, "Keep it up David, and you're headed to Bellevue."

Q: How did New Yorkers come to understand that Bellevue was unique among the city’s hospitals?

A: New Yorkers understand the hospital's essential presence. When a cop is wounded in Manhattan, a firefighter is overcome with smoke, a construction worker is injured and might lose a limb, Bellevue awaits. The same holds true for the Pope or the President, should a medical crisis arise. Bellevue—the city’s largest and best level-one trauma center—has emergency services that are second to none. It's been there for epidemics and disasters for close to three centuries—from yellow fever to Ebola, from treating the Civil War wounded to treating more AIDS patients than any hospital in the nation.

Q: Who are some of Bellevue's best known physicians?

A: At one time, the city's three leading medical schools Cornell, Columbia, and NYU, used Bellevue as their primary teaching hospital. Today, only NYU remains. Through the centuries, Bellevue's faculty, house staff, and attending physicians read like a Who's Who of American medicine: Stephen Smith, MD, a giant in public health; William Welch, MD, the father of American pathology; Valentine Mott, MD, and William Halsted, MD, the leading surgeons of their era; Walter Reed, MD, and William Gorgas, MD, who tamed the ravages of Yellow Fever; Joseph Goldberger, MD, who discovered the cause of Pellagra, a deadly nutritional disease; Jonas Salk, MD, and Albert Sabin, MD, who developed the two life-saving polio vaccines; Edith Lincoln, MD, a leading expert in the study and care of tuberculosis, and Stella Chess, MD, whose work on children's temperaments helped revolutionize the field of child psychiatry, as well as, Andre Cournand, MD, and Dickinson Richards, MD, who perfected cardiac catheterization—and were awarded the Nobel Prize. The list goes on... It all happened at Bellevue.

Q:  How does Bellevue reflect the history of New York City?

A: For three centuries, people from all of the immigrant communities that have built this city and shaped its rich culture have passed through Bellevue, beginning with the Irish, and continuing with Germans, Jews, and Italians. Today, these ethnic groups have moved on, replaced by Hispanics, Haitians, Africans, South Asians, and Chinese. More than 100 languages are currently translated at Bellevue; our patients are often undocumented, uninsured, and undomiciled. Bellevue continues its mission of serving the underserved. No one is turned away.