Brigham and Women's Hospital
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a hospital in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. With Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare.
Brigham and Women's is a major teaching affiliate (and directly adjacent to the campus) of Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women's is also affiliated with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is part of the consortium of hospitals which operates Boston MedFlight.
Brigham and Women's Hospital represents the 1975 merger of three Harvard-affiliated Boston hospitals: the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (formed in 1913), the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital (1914), and the Boston Hospital for Women (itself a merger of the Boston Lying-in Hospital (1832) and the Free Hospital for Women (1875).
The hospital is home to one of the most powerful biomedical research institutes in the world. Over the last ten years, BWH has been either the largest or second-largest non-university recipient of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Brigham and Women's Hospital is particularly known for its research in cardiovascular diseases, rheumatology, endocrinology, and laboratory medicine. The hospital has also been rated as one of the best in the country by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals issue for the past dozen years.
[edit] Historical notes
- Harvey Cushing was named the surgeon-in-chief at the founding of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1913 and remained in this position for two decades, at the height of his storied career.
- Soma Weiss was named the physician-in-chief of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1939. He is noted for his discovery of esophagel lacerations with alcoholics, which was later termed as Mallory-Weiss syndrome.
- In 1954, the first successful human organ transplant, a kidney transplanted from one identical twin to another, was accomplished at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Joseph Murray, MD, received the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work and the subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs.
- The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was the home of the first coronary care unit (CCU), dedicated to the care of patients with acute heart disease.
