New York Hospital, Department of Dermatology (Farrington Daniels, Jr., MD) Records

The history of the Department of Dermatology begins when New York Hospital opened a new hospital building at W. 15th Street in 1877. By 1878, a skin and venereal disease clinic, led by Drs. L. D. Buckley and Robert Abbe, was part of the new hospital's outpatient department. The first doctor listed as a specialist in dermatology hired by New York Hospital was Dr. Hans Schwartz in 1924.

At Cornell University Medical College, dermatology was taught to medical students by the faculty of the Special Department of Dermatology when the college opened in 1898. The first head of the department was Dr. George T. Elliott, from 1898-1920. He was followed by Dr. Hans Schwartz from 1920-1941. Both skin diseases and syphilology were taught.

When the medical center opened in 1932, Dermatology was a sub-department (later division) under the Department of Medicine. Dr. Hans Schwartz was the first head of this new sub- department. Dermatology at this time was mostly a large outpatient department. A few hospital beds were available for patients and teaching purposes. In 1939, Dr. George Lewis moved his research laboratory from New York Post Graduate Hospital to New York Hospital. He became the head of the division in 1941 and served until 1961. Dr. Douglas Torre served as acting head until Dr. Farrington Daniels, Jr was appointed the head in 1962. He was followed by Drs. D. Martin Carter and George Hambrick, who co-chair the division. The division became an independent department in 1993. Dr. George Hambrick was the first acting chairmen/chief. In 1995, Dr. Richard Granstein was appointed the chairman/chief of the department.

Dr. Farrington Daniels, Jr. was born in Worcester, MA on September 29, 1918 and was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He received a B. A. in Anthropology/Zoology in 1940, M. A. in Zoology in 1942 from University of Wisconsin, Madison and M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1943. He spent his first two years of medical school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After graduating from Harvard, he was an intern at New York Hospital in 1944. He joined the Army Medical Corps where he served in the neurosurgery service and later assistant chief of the General Medicine and Cardiology Section at Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta, GA. Then he served at the 153rd Station Hospital in the Philippines from April 1946-January 1947. After his discharge at the rank of captain from the army, he went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Department of Pathology from January-June 1947. He returned for a residency in medicine at New York Hospital in June 1947-June 1949. He was then a fellow at Cornell University Medical College from 1949-1950. He then returned to Harvard where he received a MA in Public Health in 1952. We worked at the EPA Quartermaster Research and Development Center in Natick, MA where he conducted research in stress physiology and human engineering. Next, he went to University of Oregon Medical School in Portland, OR where he was the assistant professor of dermatology from December 1955-July 1961. From 1961-1962, he was an associate professor of dermatology at University of Illinois College of Medicine. In 1962, he was appointed the head of the Dermatology Division, under the Department of Medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. He rose to professor of dermatology and attending physician in 1969. He was also appointed professor of public health in 1969, professor of pathology in 1977 at Cornell University Medical College and attending physician and acting head of dermatology at Memorial Hospital from 1975-1978. He stepped down from the head position in 1981 but did not retired until 1984. His research interests included u.v. radiation on skin and its link to sunburn, skin cancer, and skin aging; evolution of skin color; ozone and u.v. radiation; and cryosurgery of the skin. He died on November 12, 2002.