Newswise — New York University historian David Oshinsky will deliver “Bellevue: A Look Back at America’s Most Storied Hospital”—a public lecture—on Tues., Nov. 28, 5:30 p.m. at NYU’s Jurow Lecture Hall, Silver Center (100 Washington Square East/enter at 31 Washington Place).
Bellevue Hospital occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe--or groundbreaking scientific advance--that did not touch Bellevue.
In his lecture, Oshinsky will chronicle the history of America's oldest hospital and chart the rise of New York to the nation’s preeminent city, bringing to light the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
Oshinsky, the director of the Division of Medical Humanities in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health and a professor in NYU’s Department of History, is the author of Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital.
Oshinsky has also penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, which chronicles the impact of polio in the U.S. and the effort by scientists to find a successful vaccine, as well as Capital Punishment on Trial: Furman v. Georgia and the Death Penalty in Modern America, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, and Worse Than Slavery, among other works.
The event, an NYU College of Arts and Science Bentson Dean’s Lecture, is free and open to the public. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited. Please call 212.998.8100 for more information. Subway Lines: 6 (Astor Place); N, R (8th Street).
Reporters wishing to attend the lecture must RSVP to James Devitt, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or [email protected].
# # #
RSS