This National Palliative Care Month, I’m highlighting an early and often overlooked pioneer from Western New York: Dr. Harvey R. Gaylord, appointed Pathologist-in-Chief at what is now Roswell Park on November 13, 1901. It was there that he began to appreciate the importance of managing suffering at the same time as you treated the disease. Long before the hospice movement existed, he was writing and teaching about the physician’s responsibility to relieve suffering, manage pain, support dignity, and care compassionately for patients with advanced disease. In many ways, Dr. Gaylord helped lay the intellectual groundwork for the palliative care principles that leaders like Dr. Robert Milch would later bring to life in Buffalo. As we recognize palliative care this month, it’s worth remembering that its roots run deep in our community — shaped by clinicians who understood more than a century ago that good medicine must also mean good comfort.