Dr. Goodale with members of the medical, surgical, and laboratory departments at Buffalo City Hospital. Photo from A Surgical Program Comes of Age, 1941-1962. Surgery prep at Buffalo City Hospital. Buffalo City Hospital, medical students at bedsides. Photo from A Surgical Program Comes of Age, 1941-1962. Doctor and nurse perform X-ray on a male patient, ca. 1920. 20 A humanitarian hospital that treats everyone. In 1927, The Catholic Union & Times reported that City Hospital, built at a cost of $4,000,000 (including all additions up to that time) was the most complete institution of its kind in the country, with more than 860 beds and facilities “for the purpose for which it was intended—care of Buffalo’s worthy poor.” Operational costs were $1,100,000 a year. In that year, nearly 10,000 patients were admitted even though there were 13 other hospitals in Buffalo. As for the “worthy poor,” an article in the Buffalo Times a few years later asserted that at City Hospital, “no distinction is made between millionaires, bluebloods, and Mr. Nobodies” and that “all diseases known to mankind are treated here, including leprosy, silicotic lungs, cancer, diabetes, trauma, and tuberculosis. The hospital has a pharmacy and a nursery and 500 to 700 patients are treated daily.” During the 1920s, the hospital also maintained up to 21 well baby clinics throughout the city, most of which were transferred to the Department of Health in 1931. Pre-natal clinics were also opened at the hospital’s branch dispensaries. Buffalo City Hospital 1918-1939 Dr. Walter S. Goodale After graduating from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine in 1903 and working in private practice, then as an inspector in the Department of Health, Dr. Walter Spiesser Goodale served as the superintendent of the Buffalo City Hospital from its inception until his death in 1941. He was a member of the hospital’s executive committee and of the faculty at the UB School of Medicine, serving initially as an instructor in medicine and finally as professor of hygiene and public health. Dr. Goodale was also a student of music, a choir singer, a choir master, a violinist, and a co-composer of the alma mater of the University of Buffalo. He accepted a commission as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps just before the signing of the armistice ending World War I and worked for three months as an observer and hospital administrator. In 1942, the buildings for the treatment of tuberculosis at the Edward J. Meyer Memorial Hospital were dedicated to Dr. Goodale with this tribute: “Positive in his considered beliefs, emphatic and forceful in his advocacy of any cause to which he subscribed, he maintained his principles with small regard to personal interests or expediency.”