From Almshouse to Hospital: The Shaping of Philadelphia General Hospital

After almost 250 years, one of the nation’s first, and most illustrious, hospitals closed. Its demise was a particularly dramatic but representative symptom of a more general decay in the quality of public medicine in America’s older cities. The gradual differentiation of municipal welfare mechanisms from almshouse to hospital is traced; it has been an elusive and incomplete evolution.

Author(s): Charles E. Rosenberg

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Volume 60, Issue 1 (pages 108–154)
Published in 1982