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Founded in 1980


T
he first state-level medical history society to have a website.  Our goal is to promote interest, research, and writing in medical history, and we are dedicated to the discussion and enjoyment of the history of medicine and allied fields.

  

Upcoming Events

    • Tuesday, October 21, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Zoom

    MHSNJ Zoom Program—Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 7 pm
    Speaker:         Richard Marfuggi, MD, DMH
    Topic:             A Man of Science, A Man of Desire: Samuel Pozzi in the Belle Époque

    Dr. Marfuggi has submitted the following summary of his talk:

    The history of Medicine is filled with stories of colorful practitioners and patients. Perhaps one of the more colorful practitioners is Samuel Pozzi. Not only is he credited with pioneering the field of gynecology in France, but he is also known by the moniker Dr. Love.

     Pozzi cannot be pigeon-holed, as his prodigious medical talents were matched by his political, military, aesthetic, and amorous pursuits. This presentation will, I trust, take you on a romp through his life, punctuated with multiple tangents that reflect the facets of his extraordinary life.

    About the speaker:

    Dr. Marfuggi, a retired board-certified plastic surgeon, is a past president of the Medical History Society of New Jersey. He holds a Doctor of Medical Humanities degree. He has previously served in numerous professional capacities, including Medical Director of the National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC) on Medicine and Health Care, Medical Director of the WBB Research Institute (WBBRI), member of the Foreign Policy Association (FPA), Commissioner of the American Medical Association Foundation (AMAF), and presenter at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). Dr. Marfuggi's interests, presentations, and publications focus on medical education, medical ethics, the American healthcare system, past and current pandemics, health equity, emerging biomedical technologies, and medical history.

    A proud dilettante, Marfuggi is an avid reader and needleworker, as well as a patron of the theater and opera. He recently retired from the Metropolitan Opera after a 25-year career as an artistic supernumerary that included nearly 1,000 performances in over a dozen operas.


Past events

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 Michael Nevins, MD: Monkey Business
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 Annual Spring Meeting
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 John Jackson, JD: From Metaphor to Models and Beyond: A Rough Guide to the History of Demonstrative Evidence in the Litigation of Medical Issues
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 Laura Ebner: Representing the Mob: The Destruction of a Smallpox Isolation Hospital in Orange, New Jersey in 1901
Tuesday, January 21, 2025 Mindy Schwartz, MD: The Medicine of History: Clinical-Historical Connections (Donald F. Kent Memorial Lecture)
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 Sandra Moss, MD: Waldemar Haffkine: Bubonic Plague, Cholera, and the Malkowal Disaster
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 David J. Wolf, MD: The History of 20th Century Hematology: Drs. Janet Vaughan and George Minot
Tuesday, September 17, 2024 Michael Nevins, MD: Newark's Parsonnet - Danzis Medical Dynasty
Wednesday, May 01, 2024 Annual Spring Meeting
Tuesday, March 12, 2024 Alan Lippman, MD: Medical Research Misconduct: A Challenge to Scientific Integrity
Tuesday, January 16, 2024 Nina Gelbart, PhD: The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Mme du Coudray (Donald F. Kent Memorial Lecture)
Tuesday, December 19, 2023 John Zen Jackson, Esq: Osler's Eccentric Patient
Tuesday, September 19, 2023 Steven J. Peitzman MD: Medical School Architecture in Philadelphia: A Very Short History
Tuesday, July 18, 2023 MHSNJ Zoom Social
Thursday, April 20, 2023 Annual Spring Meeting
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 Sandra Moss, MD: Sir Moses Montefiore and Dr. Thomas Hodgkin: A Beautiful Friendship
Tuesday, January 17, 2023 Paul Stepansky: The Historical and Ahistorical Nature of Medical Caring (Donald F. Kent Memorial Lecture)
Thursday, January 05, 2023 MHSNJ Winter Social
Tuesday, November 01, 2022 Richard J. Kahn, MD: Noah Webster: Epidemiologist Revisited
Tuesday, July 19, 2022 MHSNJ Summer Social
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Bob Vietrogoski: Dr. Harrison Martland: Newark's Sherlock Holmes
Tuesday, April 19, 2022 Linda Whitfield-Spinner: "Breaking Racial and Social Barriers: The Life of Dr. E. Mae McCarroll."
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 Dennis Cornfield: “Ladies First: The West Philadelphia Hospital for Women.”
Tuesday, February 15, 2022 W. Bruce Fye: "French Caricatures of Doctors (1906-1926): Graphic Satire and the Search for Hidden Meanings”
Tuesday, December 21, 2021 Karen Reeds: "The Sniff Test: Making Sense of Medicinal Plants in Colonial North America."
Tuesday, November 16, 2021 Sandra Moss: "Doc Holliday: Dentist at the O.K. Corral"
Tuesday, October 19, 2021 T. Jock Murray: The Medical Response to the Halifax Explosion
Tuesday, September 21, 2021 David J. Wolf: Sir William Osler and Bookworms
Tuesday, August 17, 2021 MHSNJ Summer Social
Tuesday, July 20, 2021 Michael Nevins: "Dancing Through Rutgers Medical College, 1826-1828"
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 Nicole Salomone: Something at the Coffin is Knocking: Social Implications of Premature Burial in Enlightenment England
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 MHSNJ Saffron Lecture: Jonathan Engel, "The Genesis of Private Health Insurance in the United States"
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 Alan Lippman: Protest by Arson: The Burning of the 'Quarantine'
Thursday, March 18, 2021 Joshua Schor: "Long Term Care Before and After Covid" by Dr. Joshua Schor
Tuesday, February 16, 2021 Robert Vietrogoski: ‘Agitation of the Question’: James McCune Smith and the New York Academy of Medicine, 1847 and 2018
Tuesday, January 19, 2021 Eighth Annual Donald F. Kent Memorial Lecture: Dr. William H. Frishman Discusses “The Health and Medical Care of the Presidents: 1789 – 2020"
Tuesday, December 22, 2020 Vincent J. Cirillo: Oil of Turpentine: Sheet Anchor of 19th Century Therapeutics
Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Frank Katz Discusses “Combating Antivivisectionists While Seeking Cures for Disease: The Rockefeller Institute in New Jersey"
Tuesday, October 27, 2020 David K. Randall: 41st Annual Morris Saffron Lecture: "Black Death at the Golden Gate"
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 John Zen Jackson: “Walt Whitman’s Healing Presence: A Poet’s Civil War.”
Wednesday, May 20, 2020 CANCELLED: SPRING 2020: Meeting of the Medical History Society of New Jersey
Friday, May 01, 2020 The Society's 40th Anniversary
Friday, November 01, 2019 2019 New Jersey History Conference, NJ Women Make History
Thursday, October 10, 2019 Annual Fall Meeting

SAVE THE DATE!

Program Schedule for 2025-26 

  • Tuesday, September 16, 2025

    Michael Nevins, MD

    “Monkey Business”


    Tuesday, October 21, 2025

    Richard Marfuggi, MD, DMH

    “Medicine, Art, and a Love Affair”


    Tuesday, November 18, 2025

    Jeffrey Levine, MD

    “Secrets of the Fabrica”


    Tuesday, January 20, 2026   (Kent Memorial Lecture)

    Jacalyn Duffin, MD, PhD

    “Medical Expedition to Easter Island”

     

    Tuesday, February 17, 2026

    Alan Lippman, MD and Linda Costanzo, PhD

    “Organ Transplantation: History and Ethics Intersect”

     

    Tuesday, March 17, 2026      (Kent Memorial Lecture)

    Jock Murray, MD

    “Artists Who Painted Their Own Illness”


    Wednesday, May 6, 2026      (Annual Spring Meeting, Princeton)

    Afternoon speakers:

    1. Dennis Cornfield, MD: “Covert Medical Activity in the Warsaw Ghetto”
    2. Julia Friberg and Ted Eisenstat, MD“Toxic Ideology”
    3. Richard Marfuggi, MD, DMH : “Conan Doyle for the Defense”

    Saffron Memorial Lecture

    William C. Summers, MD, PhD: “The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-11”


      


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