Harvard Medical School. Dept. of Pathology.

The Pathological Anatomy Department of Harvard Medical School was established in 1847 with John B. S. Jackson's faculty appointment; in 1854 the professorship was endowed and the teaching of pathology was combined with course work in physic and in clinical medicine. Following Jackson, Reginald Heber Fitz was department head from 1879 to 1892. William Thomas Councilman succeeded Fitz in 1892 and began formal integration of clinical pathological work with academic study. In addition to his professorship he was pathologist at Boston City Hospital. He brought James Homer Wright to the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as staff pathologist, and he trained Frank Burr Mallory, who began teaching at Harvard Medical School in 1891 and succeeded Councilman at Boston City Hospital in 1914 when Councilman moved to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Under Councilman's direction pathology at the Medical School laboratory became coordinated with clinical work at MGH, Boston City, Long Island, Children's, and the Carney hospitals. These connections were further elaborated by S. Burt Wolbach, who became department head in 1922 and also was chief pathologist at Children's, Boston Lying-in, and Peter Bent Brigham hospitals until his retirement in 1947.

The clinico-pathological case system, introduced at MGH by Richard C. Cabot in 1910 and published weekly in the New England Journal of Medicine beginning in 1915, provided a forum to illustrate the successful interdependence of clinical diagnosis with laboratory pathological testing and identification.