We preserve and disseminate the hospital’s history, supporting discovery and ensuring accessibility for all.
Meet our latest archives exhibit! From an alms box used to collect some of the hospital's first donations to zebra fish developed in the Zon Research Lab, each object in this collection tells a unique story about Boston Children's Hospital. Scroll through each letter to learn more.
Since day one, our patients have benefited from the kindness of strangers. Donors gave $25,325 to open the hospital in 1869. Coins dropped into this alms box continued the tradition of giving. So did other early gifts—from turnips and cod liver oil to ice cream and a pair of tame rabbits!
What if you were thirsty but couldn’t ask for water? In pain but couldn’t ask for help? This picture board could speak for you. It is one of many communication tools based on work by Boston Children’s specialists.
When Curious George went to the hospital in 1966, he met the “play lady.” She was modeled after Myra Fox, founder of Child Life at Boston Children’s. Fox had asked the authors to write the book. She believed books and play could comfort ill children. What comforts you?
This is a picture of dream sleep. Made during a sleep study, it shows what the sleeper’s eyes (EOG), muscles (EMG) and brain (EEG) were doing. Sleep studies also record breathing and oxygen levels. Together, these signals can reveal the cause of sleep problems.
Ether isn’t used today, but it was once the only anesthetic. Giving it to infants was risky. Masks were too big. How much to give was unclear. Were the babies asleep? Waking up? Nurse Betty Lank and doctor Robert Smith helped make anesthesia safe for babies. In the 1930s Lank had infant masks and blood pressure cuffs made. In the 1950s Smith began monitoring every heartbeat to keep children safely asleep. Surgeons could then operate longer and save more lives.
In an ear, up a nose, down a throat—these objects have been where no pin or button should ever go. Our ear, nose and throat surgeons still remove foreign bodies. Now button batteries pose the greatest challenge.
Sidney Farber saw these cells and knew a family would grieve. Their child had blood cancer. Back then the disease was always fatal. But in 1948 Farber found the first drug to stop cancer. It worked only briefly but showed what was possible. Today, almost all children with the most common blood cancer survive. Farber used slides like this one for lectures. Yesterday’s PowerPoint!
History Made Three Times!
In 1938, 7-year-old Lorraine became the first person in the world to undergo a successful heart repair. A brash young surgeon at Boston Children’s, Robert Gross, opened Lorraine’s chest and closed a PDA – a channel between her heart’s major blood vessels.
We don’t worry about polio today. But for centuries, it was among the most feared diseases. It could leave people unable to walk or, even worse, unable to breathe. Iron lungs like this one, first used in 1928, at Boston Children’s, breathed for them. The iron lung saved thousands of patients before vaccines all but eliminated polio. Some needed breathing support for a few hours a day, others nonstop for weeks or months. A few individuals lived out their lives in an iron lung.
Boston Children’s wrote Johnny in 1953 to prepare kids for the hospital. We still help children prepare. Today’s tools? Videos. VR tours. Simulations. Even comic books our doctors write!
These items changed how we think about babies. They were part of a kit T. Berry Brazelton used to assess newborns in the 1970s. Brazelton taught doctors and parents to look, listen and learn, even from the youngest babies. He shared his insights in 24 books and a newborn assessment scale.
Our first two patients had broken bones—one a leg and the other, an arm. They were a sign of things to come. For decades bone disorders were the most common problems our hospital treated. We even had a shop to make braces. It opened in 1884 and operated for nearly 100 years. These braces date from the 1960s.
Bad milk was a big problem in the late 1800s. It spread diseases like tuberculosis. To keep patients safe, Boston Children’s had its own cows, as well as a milk lab at the Infants Hospital.
They came by boat from across the sea. Members of the Sisters of St. Margaret, they had nursed sick children in their native England. Now they would do the same and more at Boston Children’s Hospital. From 1872 to 1917 the sisters not only cared for our patients but also ran the hospital’s day-to-day operations. As our hospital grew, so did nurses’ roles and leadership. In addition to providing exceptional, compassionate care, today’s nurses devise new care processes and coordinate treatment teams. They guide safety, quality and family support planning.
This bit of plastic breathes! It holds human lung and blood vessel cells arranged just as they are in your body. It mimics the in-and-out of your breathing, too. The video shows how. This first organ-on-a-chip was created at Boston Children’s in 2008. A team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute has since made chips for liver, intestine, kidney, bone marrow and more. The chips are used to test drugs and study disease.
Claudia De Pass had sickle cell disease. As a child, she spent more time at Boston Children’s than in school. But in 1983, Claudia became the first person to take hydroxyurea, the drug that finally controlled sickle cell. It freed Claudia and thousands like her to live their dreams.
A question can change the world. Consider one Judah Folkman asked. He wondered why some cancers are tiny and harmless while others grow wildly and kill. In 1971, he proposed an answer: Tumors need new blood vessels to grow and spread. Years of research proved him right. Drugs that block tumor blood vessels from forming are now saving lives. Folkman never stopped asking questions. His team brainstormed new ones each year. If you were a scientist, what would you ask?
This elephant isn’t the only one who needs help breathing. So do many babies born too soon. A lung disease, respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), was once the main reason they died. Mary Ellen Avery figured out what caused RDS in 1959, leading to a treatment that has saved countless preemies. And the elephant? It brought countless smiles. Al Capp drew it to cheer our patients.
This model of tangled blood vessels in a child’s brain was 3D-printed from MRI scans. It puts the patient’s anatomy in our surgeons’ hands. They can hold it, mark it, plan and practice. Our surgeons now use such models whether they’re fixing blood vessels or bones, a heart or a brain. The models make surgery safer.
In the 1970s, hundreds of kids skipped a visit from the Tooth Fairy for science. They gave their baby teeth to Boston Children’s. Our researchers were studying lead. They knew lead can damage a child’s brain but not how much was too much. By comparing lead levels in kids’ teeth with school success they found that even very low levels of lead can cause problems. Today we know that no amount is safe.
This is a nurse’s uniform from the mid-20th century. Why do you think nurses and doctors wear uniforms? Have you ever worn one?
Nobel Achievement
Measles. Mumps. Chicken pox. Few kids in the U.S. get them today thanks to vaccines, and the vaccines are thanks to John Enders. He and his team at Boston Children’s developed a way to grow these and other viruses in human cells. Their first success—poliovirus—was recognized with a Nobel Prize.
More than half your weight is water, and all that water contains chemicals called salts. In the 1920s no one knew how much of which salts were in which body fluids. Finding out was urgent because babies were dying of dehydration. Replacing lost water wasn’t enough to save them. They needed the right salts, too. James Gamble solved the puzzle with the help of this machine, a potentiometer. His findings led to treatments that replace both water and salts. Think Gatorade!
How do you take an X-ray in a building without power? Easy—run a wire from the music hall across the street. That’s how Boston Children’s powered its machine in 1903, when it opened the country’s first X-ray department. There was just one problem. No performance meant no power and no X-rays! Digital images have now replaced film X-rays like this one.
You—our patients, families, staff and friends—are why we find answers others can’t.
Can you spot the see-through zebrafish? They’re called Casper, and they were developed at Boston Children’s in 2008. Zebrafish and people have lots in common. Really! That’s why scientists can use the fish to study human disease. With Casper, they can peer inside and see changes as they happen. The hospital is home to some 100,000 fish. Its zebrafish labs are among the largest in the world.
