The history of discrimination in medicine

The New York Times had a compelling article today from Dr. Barron H. Lerner about the little known history of Jewish physicians facing quotas and discrimination in hospitals in the U.S. in the early 20th century. The practices weren't explicit, so they were hard to track and document, but many medical schools and hospitals discriminated against Eastern European Jewish physicians and medical students. Lewis P. Rowland discusses the history of discrimination in "The Legacy of Tracy J. Putnam and H. Houston Merritt." The book documents one physician's strategy for working around the quotas to hire many top physicians who were fleeing from Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Dr. Putman was later fired from his job as the head of Columbia's Neurological Institute, because he refused to fire all "non-Aryan physicians."

Dr. Lerner notes at the end of the article that the quota policies largely disappeared after the end of World War II, but that the contribution of Dr. Putnam should not be forgotten.