The Sociology of the Deceased Harvard Medical Unit at Boston City Hospital.

Many graduates of the Harvard Medical Unit (HMU) at Boston City Hospital, in either the clinical training/residency program or the research program at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, contributed in major ways to the HMU and constantly relived their HMU experiences. The HMU staff physicians, descending from founder and mentor physicians Francis W. Peabody, Soma Weiss, and George R.

The rise of pathophysiologic research in the United States: the role of two Harvard hospitals.

Pathophysiologic research, the major approach to understanding and treating disease, was created in the 20th century, and two Harvard-affiliated hospitals, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Boston City Hospital, played a key role in its development. After the Flexner Report of 1910, medical students were assigned clinical clerkships in teaching hospitals. Rockefeller-trained Francis Weld Peabody, who was committed to investigative, pathophysiologic research, was a critical leader in these efforts.

Soma Weiss, Alfred S. Reinhart, and the care of the patient.

Soma Weiss, a brilliant clinician, researcher, and teacher at Harvard Medical School, cared for Alfred S. Reinhart, who succumbed to subacute bacterial endocarditis in his final year at Harvard Medical School. Reinhart recorded his observations and experiences while a patient in the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory at the Boston City Hospital, and Weiss incorporated these in a paper some 10 years after Reinhart's death.

Can comparison of MZ- and DZ-twin concordance rates be used invariably to estimate heritability?

Proponents of the validity of the classical MZ-DZ twin comparison model for calculating heritability claim that the environments influencing MZ and DZ twin individuals are essentially identical. This 'equal environments assumption' may or may not be universally true when applied to the analysis of subjective traits. We examined the validity of this assumption as applied to the propensity for smoking cigarettes, reasoning that equality of environments should lead to equal smoking prevalences in MZ and DZ twin individuals.