dent and Secretary of the Board of Guardians, at the price of eight dollars—two purchasing a perpetual privilege. The office pupils of the medical officers were free to attend without charge. In November, 1807, Dr. James was delivering lectures still in the Green Boom, and there the physicians continued to give clinical instruction until 1811, when the surgeons connected with the Almshouse asked for more suitable apartments in which operations could be performed, and thus remove from the ward a source of mischief to the other sick. To correct this evil, the Board had the building called the ‘Dye and Wash-House,’ carried up an additional story, fitted up as a lecture-room, with two adjoining wards capable of holding each twenty or thirty patients; and here were next delivered clinical lectures.”[1]
“During 1813 the Managers, anxious to advance the reputation and popularity of the house, were induced to tender to every student taking its ticket the privilege of attending a case of labor; and to give the proposal greater publicity, it was by their authority announced in the public papers. This scheme of indiscriminate admission to the ward of the lying-in department brought out a minority protest.”
It appears that, by a rule of the house, a physician or surgeon holding a position of a similar kind in the Pennsylvania Hospital was not eligible to office in it. To this reference was made in the same report, and the wisdom was urged of selecting the “very best talent wherever found, and especially the propriety of seeking as many lecturers from the Medical School as possible.” The views thus presented were received with favor, the discriminating rule was rescinded, and a cordial
- ↑ The Almshouse building was located on the square bounded by Spruce and Pine and Tenth and Eleventh Streets. Across the centre of the lot, from east to west, was the addition made which served for the purposes specified. It made the south side of a quadrilateral; the main building facing on Spruce Street, and on the sides extending back to the new erection. In the centre was a hollow square, consisting of spacious courtyards on the sides, and a small garden between them. To the south of the entire building, as thus arranged, between it and Pine Street, was a vegetable garden. At one time the small garden was used by Dr. Wm. P. C. Barton for botanical purposes. In its centre was a summer-house that had been carried in the Federal Procession.
