Author Description

In 1927 in the field of health care an unusual event occurred. Morris Aaron Cohen, M.D. founded the Boston Evening Clinic, an unusual and never before conceived facility for the treatment of the indigent and low-wage earners who could not afford to lose a day s pay. It was an endeavor that achieved success against overwhelming odds: the objections of the Massachusetts Medical Society, major hospitals, banks, and businesses. Often denounced as unethical or even called a liar by an outstanding member of the Society who believed Morris Cohen was taking money from the poor and placing it in his own pockets, the besieged man never surrendered. None of the criticisms was justified and all were proved false. Why? Because Dr. Morris Cohen, as his memoir attests, persisted; because he believed there were many among us who required the kind of care he believed in. Eventually, this humane man who believed in the dignity of human beings, who recognized the needs of people unable to pay for medical care during the day, rose in stature with his clinic until eventual recognition by Presidents of the United States and persons, both medical and lay, within the United States and beyond. Critical Reviews Even though the concept and mission of the Boston Evening Clinic was the first of its kind in the nation, and a model that pre-dated and influenced the sweeping health care laws that ultimately created Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Cohen s vision was repeatedly thwarted by the myopic business and medical leadership, who apparently failed to grasp the longer term social value of improved health, cost savings, and job preservation that resulted from the Boston Evening Clinic s model of unfettered, timely and preventive care. - Roseanna H. Means, M.D. President and Chief Medical Officer, Women of Means, Inc. Internal Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Healing After Dark is an inspirat