Atlanta's Living Legacy

A sweeping, authoritative history of Atlanta's landmark public hospital and its role in the development of Atlanta, health care, and medical education in the 20th century. Exploring Grady's origins and growth, Atlanta's Living Legacy reveals how the hospital became a crucially important institution for the expanding Atlanta region and explores how Grady went from enjoying strong support from Atlanta's taxpayers in the first half of the twentieth century to being the object of a tax...
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A sweeping, authoritative history of Atlanta's landmark public hospital and its role in the development of Atlanta, health care, and medical education in the 20th century. Exploring Grady's origins and growth, Atlanta's Living Legacy reveals how the hospital became a crucially important institution for the expanding Atlanta region and explores how Grady went from enjoying strong support from Atlanta's taxpayers in the first half of the twentieth century to being the object of a tax revolt in the 1990s. Long recognized as Atlanta's center of caring for victims of natural and man-made disasters, including tornadoes, fires, riots, and, in 1951, a batch of poisoned moonshine that led over 300 people to Grady's ER, Grady has also been a pioneer in advancing medical treatment for injury and illness. Atlanta's Living Legacy is full of surprises, including the creation of post-graduate training sessions for African American physicians during the early 1930s, at time when black doctors were blocked from seeing patients at Grady. From its start in 1892, Grady has been a center for medical education and it relationships with the Emory University School of Medicine and the Morehouse School of Medicine have been a major part of its story. Examining major turning points in the hospital's history, the book tells the stories of Grady's racial desegregation, the impact of the introduction of Medicaid and Medicare during the 1960s, the creation of clinics for treating victims of severe burns, diabetes, and sickle cell during the 1970s and 1980s, and the hospital's response to the challenges of HIV/AIDS. It also looks at major controversies, including labor walkouts, bribery scandals, the dramatic firing of chief physicians in the 1950s, and battles over the hospital's renovation and expansion in the 1980s. Illustrated with over 100 photographs, Atlanta's Living Legacy tells the story of Grady and the people it has served, including patients, politicians, physicians, nurses, students, medical schools, and taxpayers.