Dr. Everett Gallinger is a surgeon at the Knickerbocker Hospital.
Career[]
Dr Everett Gallinger loses out on becoming Dr John Thackery’s new assistant chief surgeon to Dr. Algernon Edwards after The Robertson’s insist that Dr Edwards is hired. Overconfident in himself as a surgeon, Dr Thackery finds himself having to correct a bowel surgery that Dr Gallinger has botched.
When The Knick is due to perform a galvanic surgery, only Dr Edwards knows how to do the procedure. Unwilling to allow his black colleague the satisfaction of having one up on the white doctors, Dr Thackery sends Gallinger and Chickering into an office to steal a medical journal detailing the procedure, which turns out to have been co-written by Dr Edwards himself. Desperate to perform the surgery, but unwilling to consult Dr Edwards, Gallinger experiments on a pig and calls in his wife to attempt to translate the stolen French written journal. Much to Gallinger’s annoyance, Dr Edwards is present during the patient’s surgery so that he can talk his colleagues through the procedure. Trying to prove a point to the audience in the gallery, and his white colleagues, Dr Edwards stops his instructions during a crucial point in the surgery. Furious, Gallinger tells him “We don’t have time for your (racial slure) games,” and swallows his pride, allowing Edwards to complete the procedure. When the surgery is complete, Gallinger confronts Edwards over his earlier stunt and letting his anger get the better of him, he punches his colleague, leading to his suspension from The Knick. When Dr Gallinger returns to The Knick, he finds himself quick to anger when Dr Thackery choses Edwards to assist him with some medical research. Questioning his superior with “why him, not me” he is told jealousy and poor work ethic are doing him no favors.
After attending a medical school reunion, Gallinger meets two old classmates who tell him their disgust for the current ‘social plagues’ - Italians, Jews, homosexuals, and the very worst, black people, are not just opinions but rather science-based fact, Gallinger decides there must be a medical solution to the problem. He soon decides the solution is sterilisation and jumps at the chance to treat a group of boys about to be released from “the idiot house” When Dr Edwards admits a black patient, Gallinger is naturally outraged and refuses to neither treat, D.W. Garrison Carr nor allow him any comfort. Hell-bent on causing embarrassment for Dr Edwards, Gallinger switches Edwards’s bottle of Curare (a paralyzing agent) for a more concentrated version which stops the patient’s heart, allowing him to quickly jump in and diagnoses Edward’s ‘mistake’ saving the day.
Gallinger is later called to answer to charges of medical malpractice after Dr Edwards discovers he has been sterilising young boys. The charges however are quickly dismissed, mostly due to having been reported by a black man.
Personal Life[]
Putting his unwashed fingers into the mouth of his 9-month-old infant was Gallinger’s biggest mistake, which ultimately lead to the death of his daughter when she became infected with meningitis. Trying to ease his wife’s suffering, he brings home an orphaned child, hoping to end his wife’s grief. Unfortunately it seems Eleanor Gallinger is suffering from more than just grief when he spots her in The Knick pushing a pram containing the dead body of the child.
After Dr John Thackery is admitted to a sanitarium for his cocaine addiction and Dr Algernon Edwards takes over as Chief Surgeon, Gallinger refuses to work for a black man and visits Thackery in the hope that the drug addicted doctor is ready to resume his post at The Knick. When it appears the doctor is not yet ready, and now addicted to heroin, Gallinger kidnaps Thackery from the sanitarium and ties him up in the hold of his sailboat, bound for The Knick.
After reporting Gallinger for medical malpractice, Edwards waits for him outside the hearing, ready for a fight. Gallinger approaches him saying “In the face of intellectual reason you resort to violence,” Then surprises Edwards by delivering an unexpected blow to the stomach. Gallinger learns that his mad wife, Eleanor, actually wasn’t responsible for the death of Doctor Cotton, however with her sister Dorothy waiting at home for him, ready to get hot and heavy he thinks it best for Eleanor to remain in the sanitarium.