what does "the East Medical House Officer "mean? One of the crates I opened first contained a collection of notes and notebooks, case records and reports from his years in medical school and the years just following. Among these items, in an inexpensive frame, was my father’s medical diploma. His day of graduation was June 21, 1934. In the same crate, also framed, was a certificate attesting to the period of time in which he’d done his internship at the MGH and stating he had “faithfully served as the East Medical House Officer in the Massachusetts General Hospital during the 19 months ending January 31, 1936.” Under this certificate was a pile of file folders, held together by thick elastic bands, containing papers and case histories he’d written between 1936 and 1938, when he did two residencies, first at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital (now known as Massachusetts Mental Health), then at the Phipps Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.