Readings & Spoken Word

The Great Tonsil Massacre

When: Tue., Jan. 19, 7 p.m. 2016

Lehr’s book details the story of the success of three Rochester leaders - George Eastman, Harvey Burkhart DDS, and Health Officer Dr. George Goler - who in 1920 convinced other community leaders that several thousand of Rochester’s children were in dire need of preventative surgery to remove tonsils and adenoids, glandular “menaces” that they claimed were reservoirs where microbes causing contagious diseases incubated.