Sigismund Schulz Goldwater

Background

Goldwater was born on February 7, 1873, in New York City, the second son and fourth of the nine children of Henry and Mary (Tyroler) Goldwater. His father, of Jewish background, was a tobacconist and later a pharmacist.

Education

Sigismund attended New York public schools but left at the age of thirteen to go to work. In 1894 he enrolled in the political science course at Columbia University and the following year went to Germany, where he studied social problems at the University of Leipzig. Returning to America with a deep commitment to social reform, he entered the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College (the medical school of New York University), hoping to use medicine as a stepping-stone to a career in public health. He graduated in 1901 with the M. D. degree. Among his honors were degrees from Marquette University (1925) and New York University (1939).

Career

At seventeen Goldwater became an editor of the Cloak Journal, a garment trades publication. While covering a strike for the paper, he became interested in the problems of labor and capital, and soon afterward resigned to study economics and sociology at the institute established by George Gunton. After graduation, he interned at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and then, despite a brilliant record as a clinician, accepted appointment as assistant superintendent of Mount Sinai. Advancing to superintendent in 1903, he was one of the first medically trained hospital administrators in the United States. Despite a growing trend toward specialization, Goldwater adhered to the concept of a general hospital, believing that institutions in which all branches of medicine were fully integrated provided the best care. In 1906 he established a social service department at Mount Sinai - the third such department in the country - and he actively aided in the founding of a dentistry department and in the reorganization of the hospital's medical education services. Convinced that the fundamental task of medicine was to preserve health rather than cure the sick, he encouraged the development of an extensive outpatient service. Goldwater also favored the pavilion-type over the single-unit hospital; he was convinced that its flexible structure would enable it to adapt more easily to the changing needs of the community. In 1914 Goldwater was called by the reform mayor John Purroy Mitchel to the post of commissioner of health of New York City. In this position he began implementing a broad medical program which sought to establish minimum health and sanitary standards for everyone. As preventive health measures, he urged periodic physical examinations for the entire population, and he established a bureau of health education, the first of its kind to be affiliated with a public health agency. Goldwater resigned his city post in the fall of 1915 and returned to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he became director in 1917. As his reputation grew, he was frequently called upon as a consultant in hospital planning and construction. Altogether he advised nearly two hundred hospitals, including thirty-eight in New York and eighteen in Philadelphia. In 1924 he was appointed medical counselor of the federal Veterans' Bureau, and in 1927 he helped plan the reorganization of the British voluntary hospital system. He also carried out major reforms at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, an institution that had long been plagued by political corruption. Goldwater resigned as director of Mount Sinai in 1928, but maintained his affiliation with the hospital and continued to be active as a consultant. In 1934, when the city's health problems had been intensified by the growing severity of the depression, Goldwater accepted appointment as commissioner of hospitals of New York City. With the vigorous support of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, he began a reorganization of the city's twenty-six municipal hospitals, most of which had suffered from years of neglect. He greatly increased their efficiency by insisting upon a high degree of autonomy for each hospital's staff, by bringing all lay personnel under the civil service merit system, and by establishing expert consulting boards in medicine, nursing, dentistry, and administration. Goldwater resigned in 1940 to become president of the Associated Hospital Service, the city-wide "Blue Cross" hospital insurance organization. By coordinating the efforts of hospitals, physicians, and industrial and labor groups, he was able, under the auspices of the Associated Hospital Service, to organize Community Medical Care, which provided low-cost medical care in hospital wards to low-income families. Goldwater died of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital at the age of sixty-nine and was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York.

Achievements

• Goldwater is best remembered as Commissioner of Health in New York City, who tried to enact radical public health measures.

Membership

President of the American Hospital Association (1908), vice-president of the New York Academy of Medicine (1913), president of the American Conference on Hospital Service (1924-1926), president of the Associated Hospital Service (1940)

Connections

On February 8, 1904, Goldwater married Clara Aub, the daughter of a New York City merchant. They had three children.

Father:

Henry Goldwater

Mother:

Mary Tyroler

Spouse:

Clara Aub

Daughter:

Janet Teres Goldwater

Daughter:

Mary Margaret Goldwater

Son:

Robert John Goldwater

References

• The first hundred years of the Mount Sinai Hospital of New York, 1852-1952