1796: The first permanent medical facility in New England and one of the oldest in the United States (Boston Dispensary)
1814: The first medical facility to assign nurses to needy patients (Boston Dispensary)
1873: The first permanent U.S. clinic for venereal disease (Boston Dispensary)
1883: The first U.S. scientific use of Swedish massage and the beginnings of rehabilitative medicine (Boston Dispensary)
1899: The first U.S. lung clinic (Boston Dispensary)
1911: Hospital-based human milk collection for sick babies (The Floating Hospital)
1913: The first evening pay clinic and one of the earliest examples of employer-paid clinic treatment for employees (Boston Dispensary)
1918: The first nutrition clinic of its kind in the world (Boston Dispensary
1930: The world’s first experiment in group psychotherapy (Boston Dispensary)
1938: 100-bed Pratt Clinic constructed, the largest diagnostic clinic in the world (Boston Dispensary)
1956: Cineradiographic equipment, which takes x-ray moving pictures, installed; the first in Massachusetts (Boston Dispensary)
1958: The Rehabilitation Institute established, the first in New England (Boston Dispensary)
1963: The Family Participation Unit established; allows parents to stay overnight with their children (the Floating Hospital)
1965: The first neighborhood health center founded in Boston’s Columbia Point housing project (Tufts University School of Medicine)
1992: The first in New England and only one of six clinical sites in the U.S. to pioneer Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), used in conjunction with high-powered computers to customize the distribution of radiation beams. This results in the maximum possible dose to the diseased areas and minimum possible dose to the surrounding normal tissues and organs.