Dr. Lawrence Scharer, a pulmonary specialist, discuss his life and career with Dr. Norma Braun. He describes his upbringing in the Bronx, his education at Columbia University and the College of Physicians and Surgeons and his career at Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount Sinai West). He also touches on his family life, and his time as a Captain in the Army Medical Corps, stationed in Seoul, S. Korea.

Dr. Ginzburg discusses his experiences in Mount Sinai's Third General Hospital during World War II; working at various New York hospitals, especially Beth Israel Hospital; the surgical service at Mount Sinai and the personalities involved; the issue of credit for research on Crohn's disease; anti-Semitism in medical training.

Dr. Linda Lewis, a neurologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center discusses her life, educational choices, and career, as well as her husband’s, Gary Gambuti. Dr. Lewis trained at St. Luke's Hospital Center where she was first female president of the house staff and where she met and later married the late Mr. Gambuti, who was in leadership roles at Roosevelt Hospital from the 1960s, serving as President of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center between 1979 and 1996 when he retired.

Dr. Romas is an urologist who worked at St. Luke’s Hospital from 1984 to 2014 before moving to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. In this interview, he conveys information on his Greek background, his childhood life and schooling, medical training and as an administrator at St. Luke’s, as well as information about his family and personal interests. He also tells some interesting and funny experiences in practice.

Patricia Bloom discusses her early years in Minnesota, the roots of her interest in international community medicine; her medical education and meeting her husband, Harrison Bloom, in medical school; their joint interest in pursuing a social medicine program during residency; how she was introduced to geriatrics at Montefiore and then later was persuaded to move to St. Luke’s Hospital and help found their geriatrics program, and continue to develop her medical career. Dr. Bloom spends time discussing the challenges of raising children while working full time, international medical students in the U.S., and the challenges of medicine in Africa, particularly among the older population. She mentions a number of colleagues including David Hammerman, Gerard M. Turino, Michael Grieco, Greg Steinberg and Joel Barrish.

In this interview, Dr. Vogel describes the origins, and developments of the Department of Hematology, including establishment of a blood bank, increase in number of blood transfusions, start of bone marrow harvesting, changes in personnel, and the expansion of the department. He mentions several significant personalities including Dr. Eli Moschcowitz, Dr. Nathan Rosenthal, Dr. Lowell Erb, Dr. Louis Wasserman.

Dr. Richard Gold relates stories of his work as a radiologist at various New York tri-state area hospitals, and how he found his way to Roosevelt Hospital (now Mount Sinai West). He also shares information on his children, changes in radiology technologies, his post-retirement work as an expert medical witness.

Dr. Bernstein discusses his early training and developing interest in endocrinology, which was fostered by his Vietnam War service spent in NIH, where he worked in the endocrinology division. Following a fellowship year studying endocrinology he was recruited to St. Luke’s Hospital by Theodore B. Van Itallie, the former Chief of Medicine, who established first metabolic research lab in the country, to be the clinical director. He discusses various experiences and changes in medical practice; mentions his outside hobbies and interests and those of his family’s.

In this interview, Bronx native Robert Della Rocca talks about his youth and educational experiences, his time serving in the Vietnam War, which interrupted his medical training, his various training experiences in oculoplastic and orbital surgery afterwards, and his experiences working at St. Luke’s Hospital (now Mount Sinai Morningside) as well as New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. He highlights his family habit of volunteering, with his nursing-trained wife accompanying him as he operated in 15 countries through Latin America, the Dominion Republic, and the Middle East and training over 90 international fellows in his sub-specialty of reconstructive surgery in some of those places in over 22 years of volunteering. Dr. Della Rocca mentions his children, several of whom are following in his medical and volunteering footsteps, and his grandchildren, and touches on the reasons he is so fond of St. Luke’s Hospital.

In this interview, Dr. Newman discusses his recruitment to Beth Israel by his predecessor Ray Trussell, MD; his relationship with the Board of Trustees; BI’s role in the AIDS crisis and addiction treatment; the acquisition of Doctors Hospital and Kings Highway Hospital; the establishment of a Japanese-language medical practice; the affiliation with St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and creation of Continuum Health Partners. Individuals discussed include: Ray Trussell, MD; Charles Silver; Harold Fierman; Milton Petrie; Donna Mildvan; Harold Trigg, MD; Vincent Dole, MD and Marie Nyswander, PhD; Morton Hyman.

This oral history interview with Robert Nabatoff, MD was conducted by Arthur Aufses, Jr., MD on January 14, 1998. Lily Leopold Saint, a research assistant, and Robert Litwak, MD, the former Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital, were also present.

The interview begins with Dr. Nabatoff discussing his undergraduate and medical education and his early career. Dr. Nabatoff performed some of the earliest major vascular and cardiac surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital. He discusses the development of portacaval shunts, local anesthesia through a mitral commissurotomy, and mitral valve operations.

He also discusses how he began to perform varicose vein surgery, of which he performed more than 8,000 during his career. He is credited with making the procedure an outpatient surgery after negotiating between Blue Cross and Mount Sinai. He also talks about his other professional accomplishments, including his extensive publications and the development of a number of novel vein strippers.

The interview also includes more personal topics, such as his world travels, his early childhood and family in Harlem, what drew him to Mount Sinai, and the rarity of Jewish doctors practicing surgery in the 1930s and 1940s. He also discusses Mount Sinai Hospital's strength in treating putrid lung abscesses during that time.

In this interview, Dr. Lombardo talks about fulfilling his father’s dream of becoming a doctor, and his interest in being a clinician and a researcher. He shares memories of being influenced by several professors at New York Medical College and St. Luke’s into studying gastroenterology, and shares stories about practicing at St. Luke’s, but also learning points of cardiology from Dr. Miles Schwartz, with whom he shared private practice space. He talks about his family, and his decision to retire, and what keeps him occupied post-retirement. He and Dr. Braun commiserate on their opinion of the state of medical education and training today. Significant names mentioned include Drs. Jersey Glass, Peter du Ray, Mike Grieco, Miles Schwartz, Richard McCray, Peter Holt, William Athos, and Robert Beakman. Dr. Jeanne Baer is also in attendance and speaks up near the end of the interview.

Dr. Dibner discusses her educational background and the influences that led her in to rheumatology, and brought her to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital (SLR). She describes how her career developed and mentions the many people with whom she worked; some of the things she enjoyed the most while working at SLR; why she eventually left for other opportunities, and where that led. Some of topics and names she mentions in this interview include: closing hospitals in NYC in the 1970s; HIV and Black Wednesday and the increase in international med students in the hospital; the Norman Bethune Collective and its influence on her life; Chief Resident management courses; 9/11 her particular experience; her work at ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education); some background stories about her family; Anthony Fauci, MD; Mary O'Sullivan, MD; Mitch Engler, MD; Stanley Cortel, MD; Peter Holt, MD; Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, MD; Gerard Turino, MD; Charlotte Wagenberg Dave Barenberg, MD; Ethan Fried, MD; Jeff Brensilver, MD; Michael Grieco, MD

In this interview, Dr. Thayaparan relates information about her childhood family and schooling in Sri Lanka, the stories of Dr. Tom Dooley, a medical volunteer in Africa, that were the inspiration for her to be a doctor, her reasons for immigrating to the U.S. and the development of her career here, and what led her focus on pathology. She also mentions information about her own family and dealing with childcare issues while working at the Hospital, and some of her post-retirement activities.

Dr. Sami Hashim discusses his education and career development, his research on lipid metabolism and its derivatives, the ketogenic diet, the development of MCT (Medium Chain Triglycerides) which today has in many nutritional and medicinal applications and his collaboration with Dr. Theodore VanItallie which produced cholestyramine, the first cholesterol lowering medication. Dr. Hashim remarks on his family life and children, his hobbies, and his acquaintances with the Royal family in Kuwait and meeting the former President of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, Nobel Laureate Linus Pawling, IRA member Bobby Sands, and Arctic Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

This is a recording of the oral history of Samuel Elster, MD interviewed by Richard Steele the Medical Center Archivist at Mount Sinai on July 10th, 1996. Some of the significant topics presented in this oral history are his upbringing as part of a Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx; the difficulty he faced being accepted into medical school; and his experience at New York University Medical School. Dr. Elster worked as a cardiologist at The Mount Sinai Hospital (1950-1997), a faculty member of The Mount Sinai School of Medicine (early 1950s until retirement), and Dean of the Page and William Black Post-Graduate School of Medicine (1976-1986) and the oral history includes anecdotes from his internship and how he received his first surgeries, his residency and duties as Chief Resident, as well as how he increased the hospital’s post-mortem rate, and the spirit of volunteerism he brought to his career at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Klein discusses his early days as an intern/resident in the late 1920s, early 1930s, presenting an interesting picture of what training was like then and then compares it with his residents at the time of this interview (late 1960s), noting the changes in practice. He also relates stories about his Army experiences, the difference surgical services, adding a little on how that has changed over time, and mentions what he knows about the “ileitis story” (Crohn’s disease), and adds some personal information about himself, his schooling, marriages, etc.

Some names mentioned include: Leon Ginzburg, Gordon Oppenheimer, John Garloc, Allan Kark, A.A. Berg.

This is a recording of the oral history of Savio Woo, PhD conducted by Arthur J. Aufses, Jr on July 9th, 2003. Dr. Woo begins this oral history discussing his education, training, and research prior to coming to Mount Sinai, particularly focusing on his years of research on phenylketonuria mutation (PKU) and gene therapy. He discusses why he left Baylor University in Texas in favor of Mount Sinai after 23 years. He explains the history of the field of gene therapy and his predictions for the future of the field. He talks about the creation of the Institute of Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine at Mount Sinai and the other investigators in his laboratory, including the newest recruits, and what work they each do. He discusses two trials he has done treating metastatic tumors with gene therapy. He talks of his wife and two children, especially his daughter’s move to New York City and how she has taken to the city well following law school. Dr. Woo ends the oral history by touching on the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences – Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the competitiveness among faculty to teach there.

Nephrologist Dr. Stanley Cortell relates stories of his life and career, his early years, his educational goals, changes in clinical focus, and his career at St. Luke's Hospital.

This interview starts with personal details of Manheim’s family and personal interests and ends with hobbies. The body of the interview discusses his early surgical interests, and how he came to his career in proctology. He spends a good deal of time discussing the issue of fee splitting and doctor’s fees and salaries. He reviews a list of surgeons and gives his impression of them as people and as surgeons, which is often negative. Manheim also elaborates on his opinion of building the medical school, of which he is not in favor, and on his dislike of the anesthesia department, and criticisms of the nursing staff.

Names mentioned: Mark Ravitch; A.A. Berg; A.V Moschcowitz; Howard Lilienthal; Edwin Beer; Eddie Blier; Walter Brickner; John Gerster; Abraham O. Wilensky; Isadore Friesner; Robert Turell; Abraham Hyman; Ralph Colp.