January 26, 2001

The group portrait and composite image (below) illustrates a photographic fad that was common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially for the depiction of graduating classes. All of a school's graduating nurses in 1890, for example, would have individual portraits taken and a composite face printed by using all of the negatives together. The blended images were thought to capture the essence of the class. The twelve Boston-area physicians seen here, nine of whom were on the MGH staff, belonged to a dinner club. Their individual photos were combined to form the middle image, which seems intended to represent the typical face of American medicine, circa 1910. The picture, originally the property of Walter Dodd, MD, now is preserved in the MGH Archives and Special Collections.

Clockwise from upper right, Oliver F. Wadsworth, MD; Frederick C. Shattuck, MD; Clarence J. Blake, MD; Maurice H. Richardson, MD; Henry P. Walcott, MD; E. Wyllys Taylor, MD; John T. Bowen, MD; Charles Harrington, MD; Arthur T. Cabot, MD; William L. Richardson, MD; George B. Shattuck, MD; and Reginald H. Fitz, MD.