The 'Industrious poor' and the founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital.
* The writer is indebted to the financial support provided by the American Philosophical Society and the Barra Foundation of Philadelphia, and to the suggestions made by John Munroe of the University of Delaware, Whitfield J. Bell Jr., of the American Philosophical Society, Robert Brunhouse of the University of South Alabama, John Woodward of the University of Sheffield and Norman Capener, Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. 1 The primacy claim of the Pennsylvania Hospital is not undisputed. The Philadelphia General Hospital correctly maintains that the Philadelphia Almshouse, from which the Philadelphia General evolved, antedates the Pennsylvania Hospital by some twenty years. The Almshouse, however, was primarily a welfare institution during the eighteenth century, even though many of its inmates did suffer from physical or mental afflictions of some sort. The Pennsylvania Hospital, on the other hand, was specifically founded as a hospital. 2 For a brief discussion of the Pennsylvania Hospital's first twenty-five years, see William H. Williams, "The Early Days of Anglo-America's First Hospital," The Journal of the American Medical Association, Apr. 3, 1972, vol. 220, 115-119. For a more detailed discussion of the Pennsylvania Hospital's first fifty years, see William H. Williams, "The Pennsylvania Hospital, 1751-1801" (doctoral dissertation, University of Delaware, 1971).