THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,  XNC.

Celebration of Tenth Anniversary
  of Founding of the Institute
   Monday, April 21, 1952
          at the
  New York Academy of ktedicine
2 East 103rd Street, New York, N, Y.

Introductory Remarks By:

Michael Heidelberger, Ph,D .
Chairman of the Research Council

     In skimming through the ten years of history of the Public

Health Research Institute, I shall spend very little time glorifying

the past.

program, which will shm yuu what the Institutets staff is accomplishing

now and thus, what it augurs for the future.

It is far more important that we get on with our scientific

As far back as 1893, Drs. Hermann Biggs and William Hallock Park

realized that able men and women could not be attracted to the Bureau of

Laboratories of New York City's Health Department unless theywere given

the opportunity of carrying on research. Dr. Park's am brilliant results

in the control of diphtheria and milk-borne diseases brought in funds

from various sources and these were administered by New York University,

where Dr. Park held the post of Professor of Bacteriology.

first forty years of intensive work, diphtheria almost vanished from

the city, aided not mly by determined campaigns for active immunization

but also by Banahafls purification of diphtheria antitoxin, which made

the treatment of cases easier and safer. Park's strenuous efforts also

led to general pasteurization d milk in the city, the virtual. elimination

of the bovine tubercle bacillus as a cause of morbidity among the city's

children and a great diminution in milk4orne epidemics of streptococcal

diseases. Also, the careful typing af pneumococci by Georgia Cooper and

Annabel Nalter -- the latter still an active worker in the Bureau of

Laboratories - greatly increased the knmledge of this important group

of microorganisms and pointed the way to the extensim of therapy by

typespecific antisera produced in the rabbit that offered the only

hope of cure af pneumonia until the introduction of the sulfa drugs.

During the

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Meanwhile, the Convalescent Serum Laboratory, under Dr. William Thalhimer,

was steadily increasing its distribution of sera for the modification of

measles and scarlet fever and was winning recogtition from medical

practitioners all over the Greater City,

was the first large-scale test of BCG vaccination under Park, Mishulow

and associates.

Under way at this time, also,

By this time, the management of expanding research funds

became burdensome for the aging Dr.  Park and a group of workers from

research institutions and medical schools af the city was organized as

Health Research, Inc,, to take over this chore in 1936,  I am proud to

have been one of the incorporators and to have been connected with this

fund in its trmsformticns into ths flourishing Public Health Research

Institute of: the present day.

This remarkable transmutation, as you have noted, occurred

when atomic energy was only a vague promise and even before energy-rich

phosphate bonds were knm to carry us safely thrcxrgh our axidations

and reductions.

counsellors were required as catalysts.

a few responsible for the original idea of a Public Health Research

Institute operated by the City of New York and its ultimate execution:

in alphabetical order, Dr. George Baehr, Mr. David M, EIeyman, who first

dreamed of what such an Institute could do and was Chairman of the Board

of Directors during the ten-year period we are celebrating,  the late

Mayor La Guardia, Dr. Ralph S. ?hrckenfuss,  in whose office the Research

Council held so many meetings and whose quiet,common sense was a reliable

guide, former Health Commissioner John L, !lice, Dr, Thomas M. Rivers,

Chairman of the Institute's Research Council during the ten-year period

Vigorous personalities, energetic minds and wise

Time will permit naming only

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and a tmer of strength in the choice of the Instituters staff and

determination of its general policies.

and Mr. Francis J. Bloustein, whose keen knowledge of law always kept us

within the bounds of what we could do and what we could not do.

Nor must I forget Mr, Xax Birnkrant

I shall not review the early work of the Institute,  as this will

be done briefly during the luncheon session, but I cannot close without a

grateful word to Mr. Soger C. Elliot for his apparently effortless and

good-humored managemnt of the complex details of runnhg the business

affairs of the Institute, and another in tribute to the memory of

Dr, Walter W. Palmer, the first full-time Director of the Institute.

His two years in office eased the gruwing pains of the new organization

and made it a smoothly functioning, harmoniazs and happy place in which

to work. Also, a friendly nod to Dr. L. ?hittineton Gorharn, the new

Director, who, at the very beginning af his term, has already made great

contributions to the welfare of the Institute.

With this introductory setting of the scene, let us now see

what action is taking place upon the stage.

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