My grandfather is the doctor in this photo. I’m guessing he’s palpating the glands of the baby the nurse is holding. Notice the child on the left in the foreground (a girl, I think, since she’s wearing a nightgown). She’s sitting in a wicker wheelchair, and she and the little boy are reading a large book or maybe looking at a photo album. The child in the background looks bald, and closely shaved haircuts for boys weren’t common till crew cuts became popular.
Ma Google tells me that chemotherapy and radiation were used experimentally for cancer treatment in 1900, so there is a possibility he was being treated for that. I think it’s more likely that his head was shaved to stitch a laceration, and because it would be much easier to keep the skin clean afterwards. But that’s only a guess.
This was part of the collection of his photos that we donated to the Brooklyn Hospital Foundation. They were very pleased, and said that earlier they’d only had blueprints of the hospital’s layout, but no interior views. Also, many of the staff were identified in the albums. Earlier, they had lists of doctors and nurses, with dates and professional responsibilities, but no photos of them, and were frustrated when descendants would write in and ask for information concerning forebears who worked there. With this collection, they could match names with faces. For example, the nurse on the left is identified as Miss Waddell, although the other two were not named.
The story of my grandparents’ courtship can be found in The Girl Who Talked Too Much, recently published on Amazon.
Ann Dickinson Sargent 