Charlatans

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Due to the seasonal tilt of the earth’s axis, the dawn of June 27 came swiftly to Boston, Massachusetts, in sharp contrast to mornings in the dead of winter when the sun’s arc was low in the southern sky. Starting at 4:24 A.M., progressively bright summer light quickly filled the streets of the Italianate North End, the narrow byways of elegant Beacon Hill, and the broad boulevards of stately Back Bay. At exactly 5:09 A.M., the sun’s disc appeared at the horizon out over the Atlantic Ocean and began its steady rise into a cloudless early-morning sky.

Of the varying spires of the Boston Memorial Hospital, known as the BMH, the first to catch the golden rays was the very top of the central, twenty-one-story Stanhope Pavilion. This modern glass tower was the newest addition to the mishmash of structures comprising the famous tertiary-care Harvard teaching hospital that overlooked the Boston Harbor. Its clean silhouette was strikingly different from the older, low-rise, red-brick buildings dating back more than a hundred and fifty years.

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