Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | |
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Geography | |
Location | New York City, NY, United States |
Organization | |
Funding | Non-profit hospital |
Hospital type | Specialist |
Affiliated university | Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences |
Services | |
Emergency department | Urgent care center |
Beds | 471 |
Speciality | Cancer |
History | |
Founded | 1884 (as New York Cancer Hospital) |
Links | |
Website | www |
Lists | Hospitals in the United States |
Other links | Hospitals in New York |
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK or MSKCC) is a cancer treatment and research institution in New York City, founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. Its main campus is located at 1275 York Avenue, between 67th and 68th Streets, in Manhattan.
Memorial Hospital was founded on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital by a group that included John Jacob Astor III and his wife Charlotte. The hospital appointed William B. Coley as an attending surgeon, who pioneered an early form of immunotherapy to eradicate tumors.Rose Hawthorne, daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, trained there in the summer of 1896 before founding her own order, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. In 1899, the hospital was renamed General Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancer and Allied Diseases.
Around 1910 James Ewing, a professor at Cornell University's medical college, established a collaboration with Memorial Hospital with the help and funding of industrialist and philanthropist James Douglas, who gave $100,000 to endow twenty beds for clinical research, equipment for working with radium, and a clinical laboratory for that purpose. Douglas' enthusiasm and funding for development of radiation therapy for cancer inspired Ewing to become one of the pioneers in developing this treatment. Ewing soon took over effective leadership of clinical and laboratory research at Memorial. In 1916 the hospital was renamed again, dropping “General” to become known simply as Memorial Hospital. The first fellowship training program in the US was created at Memorial in 1927, funded by the Rockefellers. In 1931 the then-most-powerful 900k-volt X-ray tube was put into use in radiation-based cancer treatment at Memorial; the tube had been built by General Electric over several years. In 1931 Ewing was formally appointed president of the hospital, a role he had effectively played until then, and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine as "Cancer Man Ewing"; the accompanying article described his role as one of the most important cancer doctors of his era. He worked at the Memorial until his retirement, in 1939. Under his leadership, Memorial became a model for other cancer centers in the United States, combining patient care with clinical and laboratory research, and it was said of him that "the relationship of Ewing to the Memorial Hospital can best be expressed in the words of Emerson, 'Every institution is but the lengthening shadow of some man.' Dr. Ewing is the Memorial Hospital".