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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    the first medical degrees conferred in this country (21st June, 17GS), and Dr. Girardus Clarkson. An additional physician, Dr. Thomas Parke, was added to the number March 25, 1774. This probably is the origin in this country of gratuitous professional service to public institutions which has become so general at the present day, and which I conceive operates disadvantageously to both he who dispenses and he who receives. To advocate such a sentiment brings no odium on the profession. It requires no argument from me to vindicate our calling from the charge of selfishness. It is not saying too much when we venture the assertion, that among the professions there are none which con- tribute so largely their free-will offerings for the relief of human suffering, or which furnish so many examples of disinterested and unselfish benevolence as our own. I cannot refrain here from relating an anecdote somewhat apropos to this subject. The late professor Chapman, while dis- charging the clinical duties of his chair in the University of Pennsylvania, had brought before him a poor Irish woman who had applied for advice. The doctor made a careful examination of her case, ordered a prescription to be made out, and bade her in a kindly tone to retire. With great simplicity of manner she tendered compensation, which, on being declined, in an air of mingled surprise and doubt, she exclaimed, Take the trifle, my jewel, for its yourself must be after living. Ah! my good woman, said the doctor in his own inimitable way, we doctors are a very peculiar people, we look for our reward hereafter. To every American the year 1776 is full of historic importance. A period when our revolutionary sires, men of large hearts, broad minds and self-sacrificing spirits, were freely spending their blood, treasure an'd wisdom to establish a national independence and government, which their children are to-day, in a spirit of un- parallelled venture, rending to pieces. On the 5th of September, 1776, the Council of Safety, through its president, Thomas Wharton, Jr., addressed a note to the mana- gers of the Bettering House,1 as it was often styled, asking per- [l The term Bettering House, in times gone by, was frequently applied to the Philadel- phia Almshouse, and probably to institutions of the same kind; occasionally it is still used by the aged ; in my boyhood I remember often hearing it. The most probable derivation of the word is from the German Bettler-Haus or Beggar House. The word probably took its start among the German communities of Pennsylvania if this is its origin. In form it would seem to refer to the fact that the almshouse is an institution to which the poor go to be cured, or helped, or to have their condition made better. Betterment, meaning improvement or making better, is not obsolete, although infrequently used. One definition by Webster of Bettering House is a house for the reformation of offenders, but this is an incorrect defi- nition as applied to the almshouse.]