Lincoln Park Doctors From 1962 Left Message Predicting the Future

By Tanveer Ali on July 1, 2014 5:22am

CHICAGO — In 1962, doctors at Grant Hospital at Webster and Lincoln avenues left a letter for those who would work in their place 50 years later.

"In this day of possible nuclear destruction and biological suicide we doctors of 1962 are only assuming that there will be a succeeding generation to read this," the letter begins.

Tanveer Ali explains what doctors of the past thought about their industry's future:

The letter was one of many items left for future medical workers in a time capsule found at the site by Eric Nordstrom, owner of the West Town-based Urban Remains, a company that reclaims artifacts from buildings throughout Chicago.

The hospital isn't there anymore, as the site has become part of the Webster Square development. Nordstrom knew there was some history to be uncovered when he visited the site in 2009.

"I removed drywall and the like until I discovered a little space in the concrete built specifically to house the copper box," Nordstrom said about checking behind the building's cornerstone in 2009.

The capsule was full of newspapers, coins and research papers from the time.

Nordstrom gave away most of the contents to developers and doctors he tracked down.

But Nordstrom kept the letter, written from the medical staff of Grant Hospital in 1962 to the staff of the hospital in 2012, that will remain in his personal collection.

"If history permits, you will know of our country's first around-the-earth space flights as of this year. Space medicine has become important," according to the doctors from 1962. "The causes of cancer and the common cold have not been discovered. We hope they will be, long before you read this."

The hospital's roots stretched back to the late 1800s when it was established as German Hospital of Chicago, later renamed Grant Hospital.

The hospital was sold in 1994, eventually becoming the 420-bed Lincoln Park Hospital.

That hospital was closed by its owner, Merit Health Systems of Louisville, in October 2008 after the city found "serious violations in health and safety codes" at the location.

Nordstrom said it's not unusual for buildings like Grant Hospital to have a time capsule behind the cornerstone. After demolition on Michael Reese Hospital in Bronzeville started in 2009, Nordstrom went there to find a relic from the past.

"I swear Michael Reese had one, but the city wanted it down so fast that they made virtually no effort to look," Nordstrom said. "I spent hours in the rubble ... nothing."

The 1962 Grant Hospital letter does have a few points that hold true more than five decades later.

"The field of electronics is playing an increasingly important role in diagnosis and treatment," the doctors wrote. "Computers are garnering and preserving vast quantities of medical and hospital data."

"One of our many wishes for you is that such modernization will not have replaced completely the art of medicine and the individual practitioner," they added.