The establishment of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center: the first nationally accredited school of public health in a public university in New York City.

The State University of New York (SUNY), Downstate Medical Center initiated a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program in July 2001 following planning efforts that began in 1995. Twelve students entered the program in June 2002, and currently some 110 MPH students and 12 Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) students are enrolled. This article describes the long and complex process of transforming the original MPH degree program, with its single focus on urban and immigrant health, with a student enrollment of 12 and 8 full-time faculty, into a school of public health with a large student enrollment of 122 students, 25 full-time faculty, five MPH degree tracks, and four DrPH degree tracks.

Bernard J. Cigrand, DDS: Father of Flag Day and renaissance man.

Dr. Bernard J. Cigrand is acknowledged as the "Father of Flag Day.

The differing views on insanity of two nineteenth century forensic psychiatrists.

Dr. Charles H. Nichols and Dr.

Smallpox and New York City's smallpox hospital.

Threatened use of the smallpox virus in bioterrorist attacks recently prompted national concerns in the United States. Smallpox, the "speckled monster," was known in antiquity. In 1856, New York City opened its first hospital devoted to caring for victims of smallpox.

A. Lincoln, esquire defends the murderer of a physician.

After only about a year of law practice, Abraham Lincoln participated in his first murder trial. Dr. Jacob M.

Concerns about infectious hepatitis and Delacorte's Welfare Island Fountain.

In 1969, philanthropist George T. Delacorte donated a spectacular water fountain to New York City on the southern tip of Welfare Island. Architects designed the fountain's jet geyser to pump a plume of water from the East River more than 400 feet into the air.

Abraham Lincoln loses a medical malpractice case, debates Stephen A. Douglas, and secures two murder acquittals.

An improperly healed fracture was the most common reason for the medical malpractice crisis between the 1830s and 1860s in the United States. As a practicing lawyer in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln defended physicians in medical malpractice law suits. One of these was Dr.

James McHenry, MD: physician, patriot, politician and poet.

James McHenry emigrated from Ireland to the American colonies in 1771. He studied medicine with Dr. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia and immediately volunteered as an Army surgeon when the Revolutionary War began.

The role of Abraham Lincoln in securing a charter for a homeopathic medical college.

In 1854, Abraham Lincoln was retained to prepare a state legislative proposal to charter a homeopathic medical college in Chicago. This was a complex task in view of the deep-seated animosity between allopathic or orthodox medical practitioners and irregular healers. Homeopathy was regarded as a cult by the nascent American Medical Association.