ABSTRACT
The process of Americanization began at birth. Within the space of one week at the Metropolitan Hospital, the author started life as a Hebrew child, with the name Yitzhak-Isaac. The Metropolitan Hospital on the northern end of Welfare Island represented a bridge between Manhattan and Queens. In the case of the Metropolitan and Sydenham it was a veritable ransoming of the past. Between the ages of five and thirteen the author was a regular inhabitant of Sydenham—a pillar of hospital patient society. He spent at least four to five months annually in that hospital, always following the same routine: entrance, examination, surgery, recovery period, and healing period. In the world of primitive anesthesiology, survival went to those best equipped to endure the pain—the pain of anticipating the surgery; the pain of the surgery itself; and the pain connected with weeks of postoperative recovery. The Metropolitan and Sydenham broke the cycle of wildness, petty theft, gang war, and street aggression.
