Pennsylvania Hospital

THE Pennsylvania Hospital was the product of a legislative maneuver so elegant that Franklin described it in his Autobiography as "the best of my political manoeuvres." In 1751, convinced that the Assembly would not fund a hospital directly, he proposed a conditional grant: the legislature would provide two thousand pounds if private citizens first raised an equal sum. The Assembly agreed, confident the private goal was unachievable. Franklin organized the subscriptions himself, met the target, collected the matching funds, and the hospital was built. "The subscribers," he observed, "are thereby encouraged to subscribe more readily, and to become more active in collecting from others."

Thomas Bond had conceived the institution; Franklin had made it happen. The Pennsylvania Hospital, which opened on Pine Street in Philadelphia in 1756, was the first hospital in America. It was simultaneously a charity (treating the poor without charge), a medical facility (treating paying patients), and a teaching resource (providing medical students access to clinical cases they could not otherwise observe). All three functions reflected the Philadelphia Enlightenment's characteristic conviction that private philanthropy, public support, and practical education should work together.

Rush joined the Hospital staff in 1783, fourteen years after his return from Edinburgh. He served as physician to the Hospital until his death in 1813 — thirty years of practice in the institution Franklin had founded. During those three decades he treated thousands of patients, trained scores of students in clinical settings, and argued repeatedly with the Board of Managers over matters ranging from the treatment of the insane (Rush wanted more active intervention; the Board was cautious) to the Hospital's response to the yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s (Rush wanted his methods applied; the Board was divided).

Read the full chapter: The Pennsylvania Hospital (Catalog II)