A new museum about medicine opens at Pennsylvania Hospital

Pennsylvania Hospital is loaded with firsts: first hospital in the colonies and subsequently the United States (1751), first apothecary (1762), medical library (1762), maternity ward (1803), and surgical amphitheater (1804). All are located over three floors of the Pine Building, which opened in 1756.

The age of the apothecary

The evolution of the institution and medicine, including three centuries of responses to health crises and wars, are covered on the first floor, which also houses the restored apothecary. Remedies following the European herbal tradition of the period were formulated and dispensed here. The bright room features walls of shoebox-sized drawers and glass-doored cases holding examples of 19th and 20th-century patent medicines.

The vintage bottles are a glance into the past: Eskey’s Neuro Phosphates, containing 17 percent alcohol, by Philadelphia’s Smith Kline & French Laboratories; Ballard’s Golden Oil, made in Old Town, Maine, included herbal oils and camphor; Porter’s Pain King, concocted in Piqua, Ohio, was 63 percent alcohol and marketed as “a family liniment.” Presumably the apothecary on duty dispensed use and dosing instructions with the preparations.

Revolutionary care

Bond wanted to establish a hospital for those who couldn’t afford private physicians and, in addition to caring for the indigent, he wanted to create a safe, humane space for mentally ill people, to dispel the then-common notion that they were possessed or cursed.

Support for his concept lagged until Bond presented his idea to Franklin, whose endorsement attracted the necessary money and influence. Both men sat on the first board of managers, Franklin as secretary. A page of his handwritten notes from the April 6, 1751 meeting is on view, along with a silver medallion Franklin had struck depicting the Parable of the Good Samaritan; it became the hospital seal. Bond, a surgeon, joined the original staff.

Building the profession

Though Pennsylvania Hospital did not merge with Penn Medicine until the 1990s, the institutions’ relationship began in 1766, when Bond offered clinical lectures for students of the University of Pennsylvania’s new medical school.

As medical training became more formal, indenture agreements became the vehicle for post-graduate medical education. Several signed indenture documents are displayed, including Jacob Ehrenzeller’s, signed in 1773. In exchange for being educated as a physician and apothecary at Pennsylvania Hospital, Ehrenzeller, the first medical resident in the colonies, agreed not to engage in vices or run away.

Originally nursing was organized as needed, with women from all walks of life brought in to help patients, including those unable to feed themselves. A pair of china “gruel feeders” are exhibited, one resembling a child’s sippy cup, the other a small gravy boat with a long spout. Laundresses could advance to nurses, and early account books indicated that those nursing mentally ill people received higher pay. Like physicians, nurses were eventually expected to complete professional education. In 1883, the hospital graduated its first nursing class.

Matron Elizabeth Gardner kept track of all activities and expenditures at the early hospital. Her 1755 notebook lists purchases of beef, mutton, fowl, oysters, oatmeal, milk, turnips, and other essentials.

Crossroad of prominent Americans

Recognizable names turn up repeatedly. Dr. Benjamin Rush, another Declaration signatory remembered as the father of American psychiatry, joined the staff in 1783. Surgeon Philip Syng Physick, who advanced the teaching of anatomy through the use of human cadavers, was on staff from 1794 to 1816.

An early receipt book lists Richard Allen and Absolom Jones among the men hired as chimney sweeps. In 1787, they founded the Free African Society, the city’s first Black mutual aid organization. In 1794, Allen established Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church while Jones, the first African American ordained an Episcopal priest, in 1802 established the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.

Shortly after writing The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key toured the institution and was inspired to compose the lengthy poem, On Visiting the Pennsylvania Hospital (c. 1815). Though the first verse is complimentary, the work turns dark, likely due to Key’s encounter with care of mentally ill patients. Though practices were humane for the time, psychiatric conditions were little understood and treatments were limited. Patients deemed a danger to themselves or others were physically restrained. Two sets of shackles rest beneath a portion of Key’s poem.

Compassionate, advanced care

Pennsylvania Hospital’s achievements in mental health and reproductive care are investigated on the second floor, which also exhibits the 13,000-volume medical library.

Rush advocated for mentally ill people, favoring gentler treatment over punishment, and introducing occupational therapy to engage them. In lectures Rush spoke of mental conditions as illnesses rather than faults.

Mental health care relocated to West Philadelphia in 1841, to Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, later renamed Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, who served as superintendent, supported clinical approaches grounded in encouragement and structured activity. Kirkbride, a national figure, led the professional organization that preceded the American Psychiatric Association. Throughout the 19th century, his architectural plan and treatment program for psychiatric institutions was considered the standard of care. The institute, commonly called Kirkbride’s, operated until 1996, when psychiatry returned to the campus at 8th and Spruce.

From the first birth in 1765 to the 5,000 babies now born annually, the hospital has been known for maternal and reproductive care, including multidisciplinary care for premature and critically ill infants, and care for patients with issues relating to fertility and high-risk pregnancy.

Surgery in the round

The domed surgical amphitheater, used from 1804 to 1868, dominates the third floor. Tiered seating enabled students and others to observe. Sunlight, the best available Illumination, was admitted through an oculus, and procedures were scheduled between 11am and 2pm to take maximum advantage.

Until ether was introduced in 1848, anesthetic options included rum, whiskey, and laudanum. Before germ theory was widely accepted, surgeons neither washed hands nor wore gloves, and blood-encrusted lab coats were considered badges of experience.

Vintage instruments are on view in velvet-lined boxes, including a “tonsil guillotine” Physick invented. The design was used well into the 20th century.

A thoroughly modern Anatomage table stands surrounded by surgery’s past. It’s an operating table-sized touchscreen with the image of a person. Simply by tapping through menus, budding surgeons can explore the intricacies and interconnections of anatomical systems. Though highly sophisticated, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the battery-powered game Operation. Thankfully the Anatomage has no jarring buzzer.

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