Medical Centre

Hercules Powder Co. wanted to know why, why, WHY Dr. Henricus Johannes Stander refused to remain as chemist. At 28 he was one of the best colloid chemists in the U. S. Was it money? No! Why, then? Because, blurted Dr. Stander, a Yale medical graduate, son of a South African country doctor: "Because I'm going to be the damnedest best obstetrician in this country." A Manhattan event last week marked him as superlatively good, if not the best. The vast new medical centre of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical College Association opened for patients and Dr. Stander was head of its department of obstetrics & gynecology, director of its Maternity Hospital subdivision, professor of gynecology & obstetrics in Cornell Medical College.

The new medical centre, a splendidly massed group of eleven aseptic-looking white buildings, glistens upon the East River at 68th Street. It represents an amalgamation of New York Hospital (oldest in the U. S. save for Philadelphia's Pennsylvania), Bloomingdale Hospital, Lying-in Hospital, Manhattan Maternity Hospital, and Cornell Medical College. Dr. George Canby Robinson, director of the joint administrative board of the organization, hopes it will become "a modern temple of healing."

The institution already has an endowment of some $30,000,000. John Pierpont Morgan gave it $2,000,000. George Fisher Baker & his late father jointly gave an-other $2,000,000. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial also gave $2,000,000. But the largest donor and virtual creator of the medical centre was the late generous Payne Whitney. His gifts totaled some $20,000,000.

When journalists inspected the buildings the day before the official opening last week, they wondered how to prevent confusion between two clumsily named Manhattan institutions--the whitish New York Hospital-Cornell Medical College Association at East 68th Street & East River, and the tawny Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center (largely endowed by Edward Stephen Harkness) at West 108th Street overlooking the North (Hudson ) River. The long formal names are necessary for legal and sentimental reasons. Nicknames suggested: East River, East Side, or Whitney Medical Centre; and North River, West Side, or Harkness Medical Centre.

The new institution is so vast that to help avoid confusion the architects (Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott of Boston) put green floors in the surgical sections, blue floors in the operating departments, grey in the medical divisions. There are special light fixtures for each department. Wherever corridors intersect, a star in the floor shows the points of the compass.

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