Cathrine Solomon discusses her personal experiences contracting Covid-19 during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020.

Lucy Yau discusses her experiences and impression of the pandemic during its first wave in spring 2020.

This collection consists of interviews with physicians and staff of the Hospitals done in conjunction with the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center Alumni Association. The interviews were carried out starting in 2017, but some of the additional materials included with the recordings date back to the 1990s. Additional materials include a transcript of the recordings, the curriculum vitae of the narrators, and occasionally other materials they wished to include in the documentation of their careers. The St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center joined the Mount Sinai Health System in 2013 and the hospitals were renamed Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West.

The interview topics include Dr. Turino’s childhood, college and medical school years, and the research he did after medical school (Class of 1948), in particular, his Korean War service working at the National Research Council where his team created Dextran, a substitute for plasma. He describes his fellowship experiences that started in a cardiopulmonary laboratory, to focus on cardio function, but led to studying lung function. Significant mentions include a fellowship with the NY Heart Association, and his time as an investigator for the City of New York. A collaboration with Ines Mandl, PhD, whose special interest is the elastic tissue of the body, led to investigating mechanisms of lung injury, and this lead to studying alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and desmosine and isodesmosine as biomarkers in COPD.

Dr. Turino relates how he established the James P. Mara Center for Lung Disease, how he became the first John H. Keating Professor of Medicine at the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center (SLR), and his efforts to make SLR a top tier research hospital. He discusses several of the outstanding researchers he recruited to SLR, and his work with several professional organizations. Of particular interest are his accounts of fund raising with American Lung Association and his involvement with the start of promoting asthma research, as well as his current clinical trials with the hyaluronan as a potential therapy for alpha-1 antitrypsin patients.

He touches on family life, wife and children, and their directions in life early in the interview and his recreational choices later in the conversation. Dr. Braun asks his opinion on the merger of St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals, and his vision for the future of medical science.

Significant names or topics mentioned in the interview include: Dr. André Frédéric Cournand; Dr. Dickinson W. Richard; Alfred Fishman; Karl Meyer, MD, PhD; Ines Mandl, PhD; James P. Mara Center for Lung Disease; Jahar Bhattacharya MD, DPhil; Alan Rozanski, MD; David J. Volsky, PhD; Seymour Lieberman; Yong Y. Lin, PhD; AIDS/HIV; American Thoracic Society; Shuren Ma, PhD; hyaluronan; hyaluronic acid; Jerome Cantor; Matrix Therapeutics; Medical Science Institute; Dr. Arthur J. Antenucci.

Theodore B. VanItallie, MD spent the bulk of his medical career as Chief of Medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital Center (1957 to 1975). Dr. VanItallie discusses his early life and influences, his medical interests and mentors; his time as Chief of Medicine and his work towards bringing St. Luke’s up to full university hospital status and a research center affiliated with Columbia University, and how these plans were thwarted, in his opinion, by Hospital administration; his opinions on the merger of St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals and the more recent merger of SL-R with Mount Sinai Medical Center; and conflicts between senior and junior Attendings. During his interview Dr. VanItallie mentions John H. Keating, Sr., MD, Sami A. Hashim, MD, Henry B. Guthrie, W. Henry Sebrell, Jr., MD, F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, MD, Gerard M. Turino, MD, Solomon A. Berson, MD, Rosalyn Yalow, PhD, Nancy Kemeny, MD. Includes extended footage of informal conversation in VanItallie's home and Drs. Braun, VanItallie, and Hashim in the garden.

Dr. George E. Green is an innovator in the application of micro-suture techniques to coronary artery surgery. He is also the first American surgeon to perform a left coronary artery bypass graft using the internal thoracic artery sutured to the left anterior descending coronary artery to bypass obstruction to the heart circulation. He developed these techniques in 1968, and in 1970 brought them to St. Luke’s Hospital to establish a cardiac surgery program that by 1982 was seeing approximately 1,800 cases a year - the biggest program in the state.

Judith L. Axelrod, MD is on the staff of the Division of Infectious Diseases of Department of Medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital. She speaks about her early influences, her training, professional relationships, her experience as a woman working in medicine in the 1970s through the 2000s, and how her work meshed with her family life. Dr. Axelrod also discusses the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. During her interview, Dr. Axelrod speaks about Donna Mildvan, MD, Arthur Ashe, John Hutchinson, MD, Solomon A. Berson, MD, Theodore B. VanItallie, MD, Michael H. Grieco, MD., Jeanne Baer, MD, Airlie Cameron, MD, and Sami A. Hashim, MD.

Interview is with Lawrence Attia, MD, Hassan Khouli, MD, Ira Meisels, MD, and Norma M.T. Braun, MD who share reminisces about the late James Jones, MD, a Mount Sinai West (formerly Roosevelt Hospital) a beloved physician and administrator who died suddenly in December 2016.

Dr. Kanick relates stories of her life from childhood in the South to educational and training choices at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons to her work at St. Luke's Hospital Center, mentioning her involvement, as the first woman president of the hospital's Medical Board, in the merger of St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals in 1979.

In this oral history interview, native New Yorker George Dermksian touches on his childhood background, college and medical training and continued training under Dr. John Keating at St. Luke’s Hospital. That was a time of significant changes in the hospital training program and the healthcare insurance industry and he has some interesting observations about both. He also provides some interesting background details on everyday life at the hospital, and about how he came to choose cardiology as a specialty.