In 1826 the Faculty applied to the Board of Trustees of the University for authority to employ an assistant to the Professor of Practice in the delivery of his clinical lectures, on the ground that the duties of the Chair were too onerous for a single individual.[1] Whereupon it was resolved, “That the Professor of the Institutes and the Practice of Medicine have permission to employ an assistant in the performance of his duties at the Almshouse, in giving clinical lectures there during the present course, and no longer.”[2]
In 1827, Dr. Jackson was chosen the Assistant to the Professor of Practice, Institutes, and Clinical Medicine, and from that time took an active part in conducting the clinics of the winter season, as well as in performing the duties devolving upon him during his own especial term. In 1832, Dr. Chapman resigned his position as Physician of the Almshouse.
The Legislature having passed the necessary law to enable the Board of Guardians of the Poor to erect new buildings for the accommodation of the indigent, this was carried into effect in 1830, and the Hospital Department, the first portion of the pile of buildings, afterwards completed on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, was in sufficient readiness upon the first visitation of the cholera, in 1832, to receive patients. The locality selected was at the time outside of the limits of the city, and in the district which was called Blockley; hence the title that was soon acquired of Blockley Hospital. Since the act of consolidation, as it has been technically called, by which the districts were united under the city government, the name of Philadelphia Hospital has been used to designate the establishment.
After the removal west of the Schuylkill, the numbers of the students attending the clinical lectures fell off. In 1834 measures were taken to secure their attendance and render it easy. Negotiations were entered into between the University and the Board of Guardians, and at a meeting of the Medical Faculty, held October 29th, it was
