History and reminiscences of the Philadelphia almshouse and Philadelphia hospital ... / Reprinted from Philadelphia hospital reports.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History and reminiscences of the Philadelphia almshouse and Philadelphia hospital ... / Reprinted from Philadelphia hospital reports. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    as the Society Grounds; and last, on the west side of the Schuyl- kill river, where we are assembled to-day. This, gentlemen, is the oldest hospital on this continent.1 Proud, in his history of Pennsylvania, a work justly esteemed for its research, says the Philadelphia Almshouse was of later date than the Pennsylvania Hospital, the origin of which was in 1753. This is a mistake. In 1742 it was fulfilling a varied routine of beneficentfunctions in affording shelter, support and employment for the poor and indigent, a hospital for the sick, and an asylum for the idiotic, the insane and the orphan. It was thus dispensing its acts of mercy and blessing, when Pennsylvania was yet a pro- vince and her inhabitants the loyal subjects of Great Britain, more than twenty years before a school of medicine was founded in this city, and indeed before most of the great events which have given the American people a historical importance among nations of the earth. Who were the first physicians appointed to attend the Phila- delphia Almshouse, and at what period were they assigned to this duty ? These are questions, so far as I know, which cannot be ascertained either from record or tradition.' In 1768, and prob- ably much earlier, Drs. Cadwalader Evans and Thomas Bond were the medical appointees; and on the 18th of May, 1769, we have a formal announcement of their re-election. The institution at this early period contained two hundred and forty-six inmates, and each of the medical attendants received fifty pounds per annum, and were required to supply such medicine as was needed for the sick. Dr. Bond studied his profession at home and abroad ; was the first surgeon and physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in which institution as early as 1769 he delivered lectures on clinical medicine and surgery. Dr. Cadwalader Evans was one of the first pupils of Dr. Bond. In order to finish his education he sailed for Edinburgh, but the vessel while on the voyage was taken by a Spanish privateer and carried to Hayti, where he remained between two and three years before he was able to renew the voyage for the Scotch metropolis, then the great centre of medical instruction. It was after his return from Scotland he became officially connected with the almshouse. I1 Prof. Wm. Osier, formerly of the medical staff of the hospital, now of Johns-Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, in answer to queries, writes the editor that the Hotel Dieu, of Montreal, was founded in 1612, and possibly some of the Mexican hospitals are older yet.]