Before 1751, sick Pennsylvanians had few healthcare options other than often expensive home visits from doctors. That changed when Benjamin Franklin and physician Thomas Bond established a medical institution to treat the physically and mentally ill for free. <\/p>\n
The result was the Pennsylvania Hospital on Spruce Street. The 275-year-old institution became home to the country\u2019s first surgical amphitheater to teach students, the oldest medical library, and a nursing museum, among other historic firsts. It continues to advance medical research as part of Penn Medicine. <\/p>\n
Now the nation\u2019s oldest chartered hospital will become Philadelphia\u2019s newest museum. <\/p>\n
The hospital\u2019s Pine Building, which started construction in 1755, will be converted to the Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, Penn announced on Monday. The museum in the majestic Georgian architecture building at Eighth and Pine Streets, designed by architect Samuel Rhoads, is scheduled to open to the public on May 8.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very Philadelphia story to hear the history of the hospital because it really is about caring for other people,\u201d said Stacey Peeples, lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital.<\/p>\n
The medical library, surgical amphitheater, and apothecary have all been restored for the museum. Eight galleries will feature videos, hands-on activities, and archival objects describing the history of the hospital and the care it delivered.<\/p>\n
The opening of the museum in the hospital\u2019s 275th year coincides with America\u2019s Semiquincentennial<\/a> celebrations. (The University of Pennsylvania<\/a> Health System, which merged with the hospital in October 1997, will run the museum.)<\/p>\n One of Peeples\u2019 favorite items on display is a collection of medical cases compiled by the hospital\u2019s doctors in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n Housed in the historic library, the book is flipped to a page showing a man with a seven-pound tumor in his cheek and neck area. Visitors can also find the actual preserved tumor from 1805 on display in the back of the room.<\/p>\n A look at early medicine<\/p>\n Pennsylvania Hospital\u2019s apothecary \u2014 where medicines were mixed and sold \u2014 was last used for that purpose in the early 1900s.<\/p>\n Most recently, it served as a conference room. <\/p>\n It\u2019ll now be restored to its original layout, based on historic images from the 19th century. That includes bringing back alcoves filled with shelves of bottles, the scale used to weigh ingredients, as well as a giant counter where the apothecary could mix medications, Peeples said.<\/p>\n In the historic library, the only room ready for news media to view this week, the artifacts remained scattered around. <\/p>\n A tonsil guillotine, designed to remove tonsils using a blade, sat next to early surgical tools and stethoscopes. Some objects, such as the scalpel, have not changed significantly in form through the years.<\/p>\n \u201cBut how we treat those objects certainly is very, very different. We want to make sure everything\u2019s sanitized now,\u201d Peeples said.<\/p>\n Other artifacts included old tools of medical education. Like three anatomical casts of women who died during childbirth in the mid-1700s that were used for anatomical study in lieu of cadavers.<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s exhibits will showcase the hospital\u2019s history of delivering care related to behavioral health and women\u2019s health, as well as its role treating patients during times of conflicts, beginning with the Seven Years\u2019 War, and through pandemics.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople would always talk about us being able to do something on a larger scale like this, and I honestly wasn\u2019t sure that was ever going to happen,\u201d said Peeples, who has been at the hospital for 25 years.<\/p>\n Tickets will go on sale at the end of the month and cost $12 per person, with discounts for those 12 and under, 65 and over, and the military.<\/p>\n The plan is for the museum to be a permanent fixture, open Wednesdays to Sundays. The rest of the hospital will keep operating as normal.<\/p>\n The hospital, older than the nation, houses 517 licensed inpatient beds, and saw 19,759 adult admissions, 54,023 emergency department visits, and 5,163 births in fiscal year 2025, per Penn Medicine\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n \u201cPennsylvania Hospital is a jewel in the crown that is Penn Medicine, where our staff draw energy from our rich history to shape the future of medicine,\u201d Alicia Gresham, CEO of Pennsylvania Hospital, said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before 1751, sick Pennsylvanians had few healthcare options other than often expensive home visits from doctors. That changed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,219349],"class_list":["post-472985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-pennsylvania-hospital-museum-philadelphia-opening-semiquincentennial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}