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Dr. Edwin H. Place’s Encounter with JFK at South Department, Boston City Hospital, 1920
Dr. Edwin Hemphill Place (1880-1957) was Physician-in-Chief of South Department (the infectious disease campus of Boston City Hospital) for 41 years from 1909 to 1950, a time during which time he cared for thousands of infectious disease patients, including 2¾-year-old John F. Kennedy (nicknamed Jack) who was hospitalized there for scarlet fever February through May 1917.
Edwin H. Place was born on September 29, 1880, the second of at least seven children, in Milton (Rock County), Wisconsin, which the Seventh Day Baptists settled around 1840. (1) His father, Professor William Francis Place (1844-1899) graduated from Williams College (Massachusetts) in 1873 at age 29 years, and then taught Latin and classics at Farina, Illinois; Big Foot Academy at Walworth, Wisconsin; and Milton College in Milton, Wisconsin, the last school for about eleven years. He completed theological studies at (Seventh Day Baptist founded) Alfred University in western New York. After ordination, he served as Unitarian minister in Arcadia, Wisconsin, for two years, and then moved to the pastorate of a Unitarian church in Francestown (Hillsborough County), New Hampshire, where he resided until his death in 1899. (2) The population of Francestown in 1900 was 693 people. (3)
Edwin Place’s mother was Alice A. Dunham (1853-?), who was born in New Jersey. (1) Edwin was her second child. (2) Edwin attended Francestown Academy, a high school that operated between 1800 and 1912 in Francestown where his father was pastor. (4) Edwin matriculated at Harvard Medical School in 1900 when it was located at 688 Boylston Street (1883-1906).
Upon graduating from medical school in 1904, Dr. Place served a two-year internship as House Officer of Boston City Hospital from 1904-1906, followed by a position as Assistant Resident Physician of Boston City Hospital’s famous South Department from 1906 to1909 under Dr. John H. McCollom, head of South Department since its opening in 1895. Dr. Place replaced Dr. McCollom in 1909 when the latter resigned to become Superintendent of Boston City Hospital. (5-6) Dr. Place joined the Harvard Medical School as assistant professor pediatrics, beginning January 1, 1914. (7) Until 1840, “Boston had been little more than a debarkation point for immigrants moving on to Canada and the interior of New England,” wrote Collier and Horowitz. (8) They continued: In 1845, in fact, the city’s foremost demographer confidently asserted that there could be no further increase in the city’s population. But over the next ten years, a tidal wave of newcomers—Boston’s harbor master claimed to be able to identify another shipload of them as far away as Deer Island just by the smell—piled off their ships, swarmed into Boston, and stayed, a quarter of a million of them. Called “famine Irish” to distinguish them from their predecessors, they were too poor to pay the tolls and fares that would take them out of the waterlocked city; they packed into the reeking Paddyvilles and Mick Alleys, as many as thirty or forty crowding into one tiny cellar, prey to accident and disease that made their death rate as high as it had been in Ireland at the height of the hunger. By 1850 they comprised a third of the city’s population. (8) Massachusetts General Hospital, the oldest hospital (founded 1811) in Boston and in New England, had become over-crowded and was unable to take in the sick poor, i.e., the Irish immigrants described by Collier and Horowitz above. In fall 1848, an “Asiatic cholera” epidemic swept Philadelphia and headed toward New York where it arrived in spring 1849. Forewarned, the Boston Board of Health anticipated its arrival and “took action as they thought fit. This consisted of orders to clean up the city. But garbage was still put in the streets to be collected once a week, followed by drenching with the new Cochituate water, first brought to Boston in 1848. Ships were stopped,” said Viets, “but only to remove all decayed or deleterious portions of their cargoes. No passengers seem to have been detained, or even examined by the physicians at the Deer Island Hospital” [the city’s quarantine hospital, then about five miles east of downtown Boston]. (9-10) The Boston Board of Health designated a large building on Fort Hill, then near the waterfront, as the city hospital for poor patients with cholera. “The first patient arrived on June 29 [1849] and the last discharged when the epidemic was over on November 15 [1849]. Of the 262 patients treated in the hospital, 166 died.” (9) The Boston City registrar’s office recorded 611 dead. Of these, 160 were Americans, of whom 79 were Bostonians. (11) City Physician Henry Grafton Clark (1804?-1892) directed the “Fort Hill Hospital” and wrote a full and glowing report of its operation, published in 1849. (11) He said, The disease was chiefly confined to that portion of the population who were destitute of the common comforts of life, or whose habits were intemperate and to those localities which were over-crowded with inhabitants and deficient in ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness….The general opinion of the physicians of Boston seems to have been opposed to the contagious character of the disease. (11) The hospital was well administered and those in attendance did not contract the disease, except for two mild examples. (11) Physician leaders were hopeful about constructing a permanent municipal hospital for the sick poor who could not find care elsewhere. For example, the number of sick people who were refused admittance to Massachusetts General Hospital between 1846 and 1849 (two and one-half years) was “731, out of 2,753 who applied for admission. Of this number the majority 561, were refused because no vacancy or free vacancy—the small proportion of beds made available to those who could not pay—existed. Only 48 of those not admitted were not eligible for admission because they had a contagious disease,” wrote Reed. (12) A bequest ($26,000) by grateful patient and suburban Boston produce farmer Elisha Goodnow made the Boston City Hospital a reality. (13) Reed wrote: The South End was considered the best location for a city hospital through a process of elimination. The old portion of the city was highly congested and, in any case, residential neighborhoods there were in the process of rapidly giving way to commercial development; thus that land was far too valuable for a hospital. East Boston and South Boston were separated from the city by water and were not areas into which the population could be expected to expand. In contrast, the South End was the only area close to the center of the city that was not built up and that had a completed infrastructure of roads. Moreover, the city had room to expand toward Dorcester, Roxbury, Brighton, and Brookline. The city annexed all of these towns, except Brookline, by 1880…At the close of 1859 the City Council approved a portion of land on Albany Street for the construction of a hospital. (12) In 1861, architect Gridley J. F. Bryan won the contest for the best design for the Boston City Hospital. The South End was once only a narrow isthmus of land connecting the town of Boston to the mainland. Gravel brought in by trains from Needham, Massachusetts, filled in the former tidal marsh between 1800 and 1850. The South End lies south of the Back Bay, northwest of South Boston, northeast of Roxbury, and north of Dorchester. Boston City Hospital opened in 1864.
Hospital officials early understood the need for separate buildings for the treatment of patients with contagious diseases, and constructed a smallpox hospital on the grounds of Boston City Hospital. “The fear of smallpox was much greater than that of any other of the other infectious diseases,” wrote McCollom, who became an authority on fever hospitals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. (14) The model for infectious disease hospitals in the United States came from Great Britain. McCollom recalled the history of the first fever hospitals in Glasgow and London, as follows: In 1870, Glasgow, Scotland, which had suffered more than any other city from diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles, established the first fever hospital for the treatment of these diseases. When in 1862 an act was passed for the establishment of a fever hospital in Glasgow there was the greatest opposition from the property owners in the immediate neighborhood. A beginning was made in the winter of 1864, and a pavilion hospital of wood on brick foundations was erected, furnished, and opened with a capacity of 136 beds on April 25, 1865; this was the first Municipal Fever Hospital. At that time the population of Glasgow was 428,123, and previous to the erection of this hospital there were no accommodations for patients ill with diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles. These diseases ran riot in the crowded tenement houses. Isolation was impossible; whole families would be swept away by either diphtheria or scarlet fever. (14) Note that Rose Kennedy, great-granddaughter of immigrant Irish was concerned about her entire family being swept away by scarlet fever when son John F. Kennedy developed it at age 2 ¾ years (more below). McCollum noted that Boston’s population in 1865 was 192,318 and that it lacked provision for infectious diseases, other than the smallpox hospital on the grounds of Boston City Hospital. The experience in Glasgow in decreasing mortality from infectious disease resulted in purchase of a large estate for hospital purposes by Glasgow officials. “On this estate was erected a pavilion hospital, capable of accommodating some four or five hundred patients. There was also a laundry and disinfecting plant where bed linen used by patients ill with infectious diseases treated at their homes could be sent to be disinfected and washed. The hospital itself was opened the latter part of 1870, and is known as the Belvidere Fever Hospital of the City of Glasgow,” noted McCollom (15) A second fever hospital, known as the Ruchill Hospital, followed, because Glasgow health authorities of Glasgow were not satisfied with the hospital accommodations at Belvidere. Apparently they were unable at certain times of the year to give each patient 2,000 cubic feet of air space, and because they were unable to vacate certain wards for six months for purposes of disinfection and renovation, they moved forward with building Ruchill. McCollum similarly reviewed the progress in London in constructing the first fever hospital built there, under the charge of the Asylums Board, in late September 1871. He wrote, Since the opening of the first [fever] hospital [in London], and the others that have been opened from time to time, there have been treated to January 1, 1901, 244,206 patients, 161,646 of whom were ill with scarlet fever; 48,529 had diphtheria. Typhus fever, which is always present to a greater or less extent in England, was represented by 2,351 patients. Typhoid fever, or enteric fever as it is termed in England, caused the admission of 15,632; and there were admitted patients ill with other diseases, 16,048.... Nine of these fever hospitals in London…are situated in different sections of the city, many of them in the outlying portions. All of them are in the centres of large tracts of land, so they have an abundant supply of fresh air…What immediately attracts a hospital man from this side of the water [Atlantic Ocean] is the bountiful supply of air space; 2,000 cubic feet to each patient and fifteen feet of wall space. A second thing that also attracts his attention is the number of vacant wards, purposely kept vacant until an emergency arises for their use, or until the time has come to empty a ward for disinfection and renovation, a condition of things that has not been reached in this county [the United States]. In London, nine individuals out of every 10,000 of the population can be provided with good hospital accommodations, if ill with an infectious disease. (16) Meanwhile, Boston City Hospital had become so crowded only five years after it opened that hospital staff cared for surgical cases in the summer in tents erected in the yard, noted Viets. In 1876, municipal officials erected new surgical and medical buildings, increasing the size of the hospital from 168 beds to 375 beds. (17) Previous to 1888, however, “there was no special provision in Boston for the care of patients ill with diphtheria and scarlet fever,” lamented McCollom. As physicians viewed with dismay the constantly increasing prevalence of these diseases, it was decided by the trustees of the Boston City Hospital, in 1887, to erect two pavilions for this special purpose. Municipal officials envisioned a third pavilion for measles but did not build it for lack of funds. (18-19) In February 1888, two wards for contagious cases opened on Boston City Hospital grounds. Ward A was for treatment of patients with scarlet fever and Ward E was for the treatment of patients with diphtheria. McCollom wrote, At first, although the number of cases of these two diseases in Boston was very great, there were comparatively few applications for admissions, but as time went on the public generally began to realize the advantage of sending patients to these wards. After a time these wards became crowded, particularly the scarlet fever ward, so that many applicants were refused admission. So crowded did the scarlet fever wards become in the latter part of 1893 that an application, which was granted, was made to the Board of Health by the trustees of the Boston City Hospital for the temporary transfer of the Epidemic Hospital on Swett street, now Southampton street, for the accommodation of scarlet fever patients. (19) One drawback of situating the contagious disease wards on the campus of the Boston City Hospital was the spread of contagious diseases to other parts of the hospital. “Isolated cases of both diphtheria and scarlet fever crop out in other wards, and nurses [and doctors] who are in no way connected with the contagious wards contract one or the other of these diseases,” noted the hospital Superintendent. (20) The Superintendent in 1890 declared, “The continuance of wards for contagious diseases, in connection with the general wards and services of the Hospital, is difficult of proper management, unsafe to the Hospital force not connected directly with the work, prejudicial to public health, and also improper and illogical from a hygienic standpoint.” He strongly urged, “Such wards should be removed to an isolated location, and the move cannot be made too soon.” (20) For example, said a report, “During the past eight months two house officers have contracted diphtheria, and one case was nearly fatal. Among the nurses four have had scarlet fever and four diphtheria, of whom two barely escaped a fatal termination, and one died.” (20) The Board of Trustees of the Boston City Hospital moved quickly to establish the first separate hospital for the treatment of infectious diseases in the United States. They called it South Department and situated it on Massachusetts Avenue, bounded by Albany and Northampton Streets. As noted by one observer, “The location is significant, because it is just about the farthest distance one could get from downtown Boston when the hospital complex began to be laid out in the late 1850s early 1860s. The site is right by the Boston/Roxbury borderline.” (21)
The South Department was opened on August 31, 1895, by the transfer of eleven patients from Wards A and E. “The Trustees very wisely decided that instead of having a Visiting Staff they would secure the services of a Resident Physician who was an expert in infectious diseases, with two or more assistants, who should have the entire care and responsibility of the professional treatment of patients, together with an assignment of House Staff and Clinical Clerks,” wrote Cheever. (22) The South Department originally consisted of seven buildings (administration building, east pavilion on one side, west pavilion on the other, gate-lodge, domestic building, laundry building, and the home for nurses), which were arranged so that there was as little communication between them as possible. Nurses who cared for patients with diphtheria and patients with scarlet fever did not intermix so as to avoid cross contaminating the wards. McCollom proudly wrote, The buildings for the patients are two two-story buildings each 160 feet long and divided by open air transverse corridors, so that each floor can be separated into four completely isolated wards. In addition to this, each section is divided into small rooms capable of accommodating from four to seven patients, with the exception of the semi-octagonal wards at the southern end of each pavilion, which accommodate, each, fifteen convalescent patients. There are also eight isolation wards, the floors of which are of terrazzo pavement and the walls of glazed brick, so that these rooms can be thoroughly and effectively disinfected after the removal of patients. These wards are exposed to the open air on all four sides, therefore there can be no danger of the transmission of disease from them. There is also a steam sterilizer on the premises for the disinfection of mattresses and all other articles that cannot be disinfected by boiling. All the garbage and refuse from the ward is burned in a crematory, so that there may be no danger to the public from these substances. The staff and all the employees reside on the premises in order that the chance of the Hospital becoming a focus of disease may be reduced to a minimum. The capacity of the Hospital is 250 beds. The buildings are so arranged that one does not obstruct the sunlight from another. An abundance of sunlight plays such an important role in hospital construction that no hospital building should be considered worthy of the name that does not have plenty of sunlight. (23) Dr. John McCollom was the first head of South Department. “He was called Resident Physician, but was later changed to Physician-in-Chief. He had under him two to three paid assistant physicians, sometimes called residents and six ‘young doctors’…While the administration was under the Superintendent of the hospital and the Board of Trustees, the South Department had a large amount of autonomy,” declared Prizer. (24)
Dr. McCollom had been House Officer in the Boston City Hospital in 1868 and in 1872 became City Physician with the Board of Health of Boston. “In that position he acquired a notable reputation in contagious diseases…He was among the first, and by some considered the first in the United States to use diphtheria antitoxin, which was discovered by Von Behring in 1894.” (24) Dr. McCollom was of Scotch descent. In 1895, he McCollom quickly adopted O’Dwyer’s approach to airway management of diphtheritic patients, that is, performing tracheal intubation rather than tracheostomy. Dr. Edwin Place, Dr. McCollom’s replacement, also believed in intubation over tracheostomy to open and maintain the airway. In 1908, Dr. McCollom resigned from South Department to become Superintendent of Boston City Hospital, as noted above. He worked in that position for seven years, resigning in 1915 because of failing eyesight. He had been in continuous service with the City of Boston for 42 years. (25) The ancestors of John F. Kennedy were “famine Irish” who emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine between 1845 and 1852. Patrick Kennedy (1824-1858), John F. Kennedy’s great-grandfather, arrived in Boston from Ireland in 1849, settled in East Boston on the water’s edge, worked as a cooper making wagon staves and whiskey barrels, and died nine years later (1858) of cholera, leaving his wife Briget Murphy (1821-1888), also born in Ireland, and three daughters and a son. The youngest child, Patrick Joseph (P.J. Kennedy) (1858-1929), grew up to become a stevedore on the Boston docks, owner of several taverns, whiskey importer, ward boss, and Massachusetts State Senator for three terms. P.J.’s wife Mary Hickey (1857-1923) bore Joseph P. Kennedy (1888-1969), who was John F. Kennedy’s father.
John F. Kennedy’s maternal great-grandparents, Rosanna Cox (1835-1879) and Thomas Fitzgerald (1823-1885), were born in Ireland; Thomas arrived to Boston in 1854. (26) Thomas and Rosanna settled in Boston’s North End Irish ghetto, where Rosanna gave birth to twelve children, including John Francis Fitzgerald (1863-1950) (Honey Fitz), John F. Kennedy’s grandfather. Thomas initially worked as a street peddler of household wares, grocer and tavern owner, and tenement landlord to Irish renters. His son, Honey Fitz, attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, and was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate in 1892 where he served alongside P.J. Kennedy from East Boston (see above). Honey Fitz later became the Mayor of Boston. (27) His oldest child born by his wife (and second cousin) Mary Josephine Hannon (1865-1964) was Rose Elizabeth Kennedy (1890-1995), John F. Kennedy’s mother. Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, first-borns who married in 1914, thus had remarkably similar backgrounds. Their first house was at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb adjacent to the City of Boston. Joe avoided military service in World War I by plunging into defense work as an assistant manager at Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River shipbuilding plant in Quincy, Massachusetts. Rose quickly became pregnant, eventually bearing nine children in the next seventeen years. John was her second child and second son, born on May 29, 1917. He was, according to Rose, “a healthy infant.” However, on February 20, 1920, he developed scarlet fever, which sent Rose into a tizzy. She wrote in her autobiography: When Jack got scarlet fever,…[i]t was a terrible time for us and, above all, a time for prayer. Kathleen was only a few days old; and with that very contagious disease in that small house on Beals Street there were fears that Joe Jr. [Jack’s one older sibling] and Rosemary [Jack’s next younger sibling] would get it, and that the new baby might also, and so might I. (28) Like virtually all general hospitals at the time, the local Brookline hospital did not admit patients with contagious diseases. Unfortunately, the Kennedys, who had chosen to live in Brookline, were not eligible to use Boston’s public hospital because they did not live in the city, opined Rose. (28) However, Rose and Joe were determined to get their son into South Department under the care of Dr. Edwin Place. Goodwin wrote, The more Joe learned about Dr. Place and the Boston City Hospital, the more obsessed he became with getting Jack in. For several days he pressed his case, mobilizing every source of influence at his command, including that of his father-in-law [Honey Fitz, former Boston mayor], until finally—in spite of the fact there were only 125 hospital beds available for the more than six hundred children in Boston suffering from scarlet fever at the same time—the hospital bent its rules and admitted young John Kennedy. (29) Joe bundled John off to South Department and handed him over to the staff. Joe “vividly recalled the distressing experience of leaving his two-and-a-half-year-old son in the small square sterile room, which doctors, nurses and attendants could enter only after thoroughly scrubbing their hands and putting on a specially disinfected gown.” (29)
Jack’s clinical course was prolonged for unknown reasons. He finally returned to the Kennedy house on Beals Street in May 1920, some three months after admission to South Department. The average length of stay for patients with scarlet fever in the 1920s was 31.6 days, according to a study performed in New York City at Willard Parker Hospital. (30) John remained hospitalized three times the average length of time. Complications of scarlet fever included bronchopneumonia and pneumonia, nephritis, mastoiditis, otitis media, meningitis, and sepsis. No antiviral or antibiotic medications were available in 1920. However, the hospital was well isolated from the filth of the outside world and was clean, roomy, and filled with sunlight. In addition, the quality of professional medical and nursing care received by the sick children at South Department was high, given the then current state of knowledge. Joe Kennedy was upset by the experience of having a sick child. He went to church to pray for Jack’s recovery every morning, promising, “If Jack was spared he would give half of all his money to charity. Every afternoon, he left his office earlier than he had ever left any job in his life and journeyed to the hospital,” where he sat “for long periods on the edge of his boy’s bed,” wrote Goodwin. (29)
Some of the nursing staff were smitten by little John Kennedy, who even as a toddler exuded charm. “He is such a wonderful boy,” said Nurse Sara Miller in a letter to Joe. “We all love him dearly.” Similarly, Nurse Anna Pope said, “Jack is certainly the nicest little boy I have ever seen.” Nurses made a couple of continuing care visits to the Kennedy’s house in Brookline after Jack’s discharge to home in May 1920. Sara Miller wrote, “I enjoyed seeing my Jack again so much. Mrs. Kennedy has a wonderful family I think. And she is such a little girl herself. But of course none of them is as nice as my Jack.” Nurse Pope, “noting sadly that she fears Jack will soon forget her,” wrote to Joe, “I am afraid I asked for too much when I asked for Jack’s picture but he was so lovable and such an excellent little patient, everyone loved him. I felt very lonesome when I left him. I was glad I had a little girl whom I could go to.” (29) John Kennedy and other scarlet fever patients received care from Dr. Place, as follows: [Dr. Place] laid great stress on the need of isolation for [scarlet fever] and of disinfecting everything that has been exposed to infection from the patients…The larger part of deaths following scarlet fever is due to pneumonia…The main thing in saving scarlet fever patients, therefore, is to see that they do not get pneumonia or that its severity is minimized as much as possible [i.e., via high-quality nursing care]. Weak heart and a tendency to Bright’s disease [kidney inflammation, or nephritis] are usually an accompaniment of scarlet fever and as food should be given the patient that will not aggravate either of these troubles, meats and eggs, containing too much protein, should be withheld during the illness and convalescence, the main reliance being on cereals and milk, the latter only in moderate quantities. Rest in bed is of the utmost importance, on account of the heart and kidneys. (31) Dr. Place stayed abreast of the newest medical ideas, and in his long tenure at the South Department readily adopted new and promising therapeutics. For example, the South Department was among the first to use convalescent scarlet fever serum in the 1920’s. (32) Perhaps John Kennedy received this serum. Dr. Place said in 1914 that the cause of scarlet fever was most likely the streptococcus bacterium because bacteriologists grew it from throat specimens in practically all patients with the disease, as well as from the septic complications of the disease, such as pneumonia, otitis media and mastoiditis. Most of the serious complications and a large majority of the deaths were unquestionably due directly to the streptococcus, he averred in 1914. (33)
Dr. Edwin Place was a classic physician of the old school. Prizer wrote the following about him: …[H]e not only left his stamp on the South Department in all its activities, but as a teacher, writer, and practitioner he influenced several generations of medical men in their ideas and practice in the field of contagious diseases, and their thinking in a broader sense. He was widely sought and never refused his help in problems of contagious diseases, and public health measures. Particularly in his younger years he never spared himself and worked endless hours. [He was married with four children.] The so-called practical or economic phase of medicine was never a factor in his thinking. He had a keen analytical mind, which he brought to bear not only in his special field, but in all phases of medicine. To stand for principle was a most important element in is philosophy, and he was fond of constantly emphasizing this. Never afraid to take an unpopular position, particularly if it involved the unfortunate, he once testified on behalf of a much neglected patient against another physician, even though this antagonized some of his colleagues. As a teacher Dr. Place was in the tradition of the great clinicians, emphasizing and analyzing history and physical findings, although not neglecting the laboratory. He was most thorough in examination of a patient and often made a striking observation which had been overlooked by previous examiners. A formidable logician, he was quick to see the flaws in an opponent’s argument, and did not hesitate to point them out. Students rated him as one of their best teachers. Although he published extensively in the medical literature, he felt that his first obligation was to the patient, the students, the public, rather than reap a certain amount of glory from publication. This may have been somewhat costly for him. Dr. Place was very adept mechanically, and loved to work with his hands. He would repair broken instruments, locks, children’s toys or almost anything. The nurses constantly called on him to do repairs and he would never refuse, no matter how busy. He devised a new type of scrub sink, made an ingenious modification of the Mosher laryngoscope for intubation purposes, and devised a combined suction and breathing tube with which membrane was removed from the larynx and trachea, and which on many occasions was a life saver. He was consultant in the building of several new contagious hospitals. One of his notable contributions was co-discoverer of Haverhill Fever [34]…One of Dr. Place’s faculties was his ability, largely by example, to instill a sense of dedication in his assistants, the nurses and even in the employees. (35) Joseph Kennedy later wrote to Dr. Place to thank him for caring for John: I would indeed be an ingrate if I let this chance pass by without telling you how much I appreciate your wonderful work for Jack during his recent illness. I had never experienced any very serious sickness in my family previous to Jack’s and I realized what an effect such a happening could possibly have on me. During the darkest days I felt that nothing else mattered except his recovery, and you must have some notion of what the gratitude of a parent can be to have his boy returned in the wonderful shape that Jack seems to be now. (29,36) Goodwin wrote, To all appearances, Joe fulfilled his pledge to God…by giving a check to the Guild of St. Apollonia, an organization of Catholic dentists committed to providing dental care to children in Catholic schools. With Joe’s check, the guild was able to purchase a motor van to transport the parochial-school children to and from its dental infirmary. The amount of the check was $3,750, which, according to Rose, was exactly half of Joe’s “fortune” at that time. (29) None of the other members of the Kennedy family came down with scarlet fever. For three months in 1920, toddler John Kennedy received the undivided care and attention of skilled and devoted medical and nursing staff at South Department. His usually extremely busy father visited him every day at the hospital, doting on him in the way that a parent does who believes his child might die. John Kennedy likely received more attention, care, and solace in the hospital from professional staff than at his home where he necessarily had to compete for attention with his three siblings, then all under the age of four years, and five more siblings on the horizon. John Kennedy spent enormous amounts of time in hospitals everywhere he travelled and lived during the remainder of his life. He even exited the world in a hospital, surrounded by a hoard of doctors and nurses. The mold for his extraordinarily intense and complex relationship with the medical and nursing world was set in 1920 during his bout with scarlet fever for which he received the exceptional care provided by staff at South Department, Boston City Hospital.
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