Emil Gruening: Founder of the Ophthalmology Service at Mount Sinai Hospital

Emil Gruening was the first chief of ophthalmology at the Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York City. The hospital started in a couple of brownstone tenement buildings in lower Manhattan. Some eye patients were cared for there and many more after moving to much larger buildings at 66th Street and Lexington Avenue. Gruening came to the United States from Posen in Prussia and soon afterwards joined the Union army. From Appomattox he returned to New York for completion of his medical studies. He went to Europe and studied with such notables as von Graefe and Helmholtz. He did cataract surgery with a Graefe knife, with a nurse at times holding his beard out of the way. He also did ear, nose, and throat surgery. There is a drawing of him doing a mastoid operation on a child with Abraham Jacobi, the father of American pediatrics, watching him. While at Mt. Sinai, William Wilmer participated in the transplant of a rabbit eye into a patient, but went on to achieve greater things in the field. When Gruening died, Wilmer wrote that next to his own father he respected Gruening more than any man he knew. Emil's son Ernest became Governor of Alaska and Senator from Alaska. When Gruening retired the Eye service was jointly run by Charles H. May and Carl Koller, but those are other tales to tell.