Rules for the Government of the Pennsylvania Hospital

The institutional constitution of the facility that Rush and Franklin helped define. The Rules establish the hierarchy of authority (Board of Managers, attending physicians, resident apothecary, nurse), the terms of patient admission and discharge, the obligations of the medical staff, and the moral expectations placed on patients. Rush's influence on the Hospital's culture is visible in the Rules' combination of humanitarian concern and disciplinary expectation -- medicine as reform, healing as civic virtue -- that characterized all of his professional commitments.

From Catalog II

The institutional constitution of the facility that Rush and Franklin helped define. The Rules establish the hierarchy of authority (Board of Managers, attending physicians, resident apothecary, nurse), the terms of patient admission and discharge, the obligations of the medical staff, and the moral expectations placed on patients. Rush's influence on the Hospital's culture is visible in the Rules' combination of humanitarian concern and disciplinary expectation -- medicine as reform, healing as civic virtue -- that characterized all of his professional commitments.