This is a recording of the oral history of Bella Trachtenberg conducted by Albert S. Lyons on October 31st, 1985. Some of the significant topics represented in this oral history include: working as a stenographer; stories from life in France while working in the laboratory at Base Hospital No. 3 AEF during World War I; her experiences with and opinion of the men of the Board of Trustees and Medical Board; recalling controversies and tensions between surgeons, as well as the first and second woman externs, Isabel Beck (finished training in 1924) and Gertrude Felshin (class of 1925), and the first woman intern Rose Speigel; and George Baehr’s work with the Consultation Serivces and early animal kidney transplants, including her own role in Baehr’s kidney transplants as an anesthesiologist.

The recording begins in mid-sentence without context.

Dr. Mendes shares stories from her career as a vascular surgeon, mentioning her early years, educational and training choices, her clinical research on venous disease in African Americans, and her time at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center

Dr. Jeanne Baer describes her family’s background in Germany and France in the years leading up to World War II, their life evading German troops in France, and their move to the US in 1948. She discusses her schooling in Pennsylvania, and her acceptance and training experiences in medical school through her residency in medicine. She provides interesting details of training in the 1960s including fellowship training in gastroenterology and finally her appointment to the radiology department at St. Luke’s Hospital and the work she did there. Baer particularly mentions Dr. Virginia Kanick with whom she formed a close friendship and training in the 60s and 70s as a woman in what was a man’s field.

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.

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.