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The committee appointed to procure a sum of money for the use of the hospital at Bushhill, &c. report, that they have applied to the President of the Bank of North America, deposited the necessary obligation, and shall have the sum of 1,500 dollars ready on the 16th instant.

Resolved, That Israel Israel, Mathew Carey, James Swaine, Andrew Adgate, Thomas Savery, John Connelly, Stephen Girard, Jacob Weaver, N. L., James Sharswood, and John M'Culloch, S. be a committee to superintend the business at Bushhill, to agree with and appoint the necessary officers at that place.

Resolved, That the Treasurer advance 50 dollars to each of the above named committee for current expenses, and to continue to advance upon their drafts as often as they may require; and that they individually make a weekly return of the expenditures.

Resolved, That James Kerr, Thomas Wistar, and John Letchworth, be a committee to prepare suitable carriages for the use of the physicians and the diseased.

Resolved, That the committee be empowered to advance such sums of money to poor families, at their houses, who are afflicted with malignant disorders, and to render them such services as may be in their power to afford.

Adjourned to the 15th, at six o'clock, to meet at this place. CALEB LOWNES, Secretary.

September 15.

Resolved, That three members of the committee for the management of the hospital at Bushhill, attend at the City Hall daily, to receive applications for relief, and to afford such assistance as may be necessary to alleviate the distresses of those who are afflicted with the prevailing malignant disorder. The door-keeper will receive applications at the door of the City Hall.

Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, members of the Board, commiserating the calamitous state which the sick may probably be reduced to for want of suitable persons to superintend the hospital, voluntarily offering their services for that benevolent employment,

Resolved, That they be accepted, and that they be encouraged immediately to enter upon the important duties of the appoint

ment.

September 16. Information is received from Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, the managers of the hospital at Bushhill, that the hospital is now fully furnished with officers and attendants, except a few nurses; that the necessary arrangements are made; that the sick are amply supplied with the necessary supplies and accommodations, and that the business is now so far matured as to afford every assistance necessary in such a hospital.

Resolved that the nurses be immediately procured and conveyed to the hospital.

Extract from the minutes,

CALEB LOWNES, Secretary.*

The generous citizens will send what linen they can spare to the attending committee at the City Hall, where it will be thankfully received.

Philadelphia, September 18.

At a meeting of the committee of citizens appointed to the care of the sick, &c.

Resolved-That the committee of citizens appointed to the care of the poor and sick afflicted with the prevailing malignant disorder in the city and vicinity, continue their sittings at the City Hall constantly, until the situation of the Hospital and afflicted in the city shall render it proper to adjourn.

Extract from the minutes,

CALEB LOWNES, Secretary.

We have the satisfaction of informing our fellow citizens, that neither of the sitting managers, physicians, nurses or attendants, at the Hospital at Bushhill, have taken the infection, or are any ways indisposed, and that there are near twenty patients recovered at that place.

That the Hospital is fully furnished with well qualified nurses-and that some, that were guilty of irregularities, are discharged.

That good information has been received from the Pennsyl

*This highly estimable citizen, who devoted a large portion of his time and attention to objects calculated to promote the prosperity and improve the morals of his fellow citizens, and who was mainly instrumental in cleansing the Augean stable of the old prison in Walnut Street, in the year 1790, lately died in Cincinnati, where his corpse lies interred. It would be honourable to the citizens of Philadelphia, and a small payment of a large debt of gratitude, to have a monumental stone, engraved with a statement of some of his various deeds of beneficence, placed at his grave. March 12, 1830.

vania Hospital, House of Employment, Alms House, and Prisons, that there is no appearance of infection in them.

TO THE CITIZENS.

The persons who are employed to remove the dead, have been frequently interrupted, insulted and threatened, whilst performing their business, by persons who appear to possess no sentiments of humanity, but such as particularly concern themselves.

In order therefore to prevent such conduct in future, NOTICE is hereby given, that prosecutions will be instituted against all those who shall offend herein.

The public safety requires that protection be given to those useful persons, and the good citizens are called upon to afford it to them, and to point out to the legal authority, all those who shall molest them in their employment.

September 17, 1793.

MATTHEW CLARKSON, Mayor.

At this particular crisis, in which so many of the merchants and others are absent from this city, the indisposition of two of the letter carriers renders it necessary to request all those who dwell south of, and in Chesnut Street, and in Front and Water, north of Market Street, to call or send for their letters for a few days.

September 18.

CHAPTER VII.

Magnanimous Offer.-Wretched State of Bushhill-Order introduced there.

Ar the meeting on Sunday, September 15th, a circumstance occurred, to which the most glowing pencil could hardly do justice. Stephen Girard, a wealthy merchant, a native of France, and one of the members of the committee, sympathising with the wretched situation of the sufferers at Bushhill, voluntarily and unexpectedly offered himself as a manager, to superintend that hospital. The surprise and satisfaction excited by this extraordinary effort of humanity, can be better conceived than expressed. Peter Helm, a native of Pennsylvania, also a member, actuated by the like benevolent motives, offered his services in the same department. Their offers were accepted;

and the same afternoon they entered on the execution of their dangerous and praiseworthy office.*

To form a just estimate of the value of the offer of these citizens, it is necessary to take into consideration the general consternation which at that period pervaded every quarter of the city, and which caused attendance on the sick to be regarded as little less than a certain sacrifice. Uninfluenced by any reflections of this kind, without any possible inducement but the purest motives of humanity, they magnanimously offered themselves as the forlorn hope of the committee. I trust that the gratitude of their fellow citizens will be as enduring as the memory of their beneficent conduct, which I hope will not die with the present generation.

On the 16th, the managers of Bushhill, after personal inspection of the state of affairs there, made report of its situation, which was truly deplorable. It exhibited as wretched a picture of human misery as ever existed. A profligate, abandoned set of nurses and attendants (hardly any of good character could at that time be procured,) rioted on the provisions and comforts prepared for the sick, who (unless at the hours when the doctors attended) were left almost entirely destitute of every assistance. The sick, the dying, and the dead, were indiscriminately mingled together. The ordure, and other evacuations of the sick, were allowed to remain in the most offensive state imaginable. Not the smallest appearance of order or regularity existed. It was, in fact, a great human slaughter-house, where numerous victims were immolated at the altar of riot and intemperance. No wonder, then, that a general dread of the place prevailed through the city, and that a removal to it was considered as the seal of death. In consequence, there were various instances of sick persons locking their rooms, and resisting every attempt to carry them away. At length, the poor were so much afraid of being sent to Bushhill, that they would not acknowledge their illness, until it was no longer possible to conceal it. For it is to be observed, that the fear of the contagion was so prevalent, that as soon as any one was taken ill, of any disorder whatever, an alarm was spread among the neighbours, and every effort was used to have the sick person hurried off to Bushhill, to avoid spreading the disorder. The cases of poor people forced in this way to that hospital, though labouring under only common colds, and common fall fevers,

The management of the interior department was assumed by Stephen Girard-of the exterior, by Peter Helm.

were numerous and afflicting. There were not wanting instances of persons, only slightly ill, being sent to Bushhill, by their panic-struck neighbours, and embracing the first opportunity of returning to Philadelphia.

The regulations adopted at Bushhill were as follow:

One of the rooms in the mansion house (which contains fourteen, besides three large entries) was allotted to the matron, and an assistant under her-eleven rooms and two entries to the sick. Those who were in a very low state were in one room— and one was appointed for the dying. The men and women were kept in distinct rooms, and attended by nurses of their own sex. Every sick person was furnished with a bedstead, clean sheet, pillow, two or three blankets, porringer, plate, spoon, and clean linen, when necessary. In the mansion house were one hundred and forty bedsteads. The new frame house, built by the committee, when it was found that the old buildings were inadequate to contain the patients commodiously, is sixty feet front, and eighteen feet deep, with three rooms on the ground floor; one of which was for the head nurses of that house, the two others for the sick. Each of these two last contained seventeen bedsteads. The loft, designed for the convalescents, was calculated to contain forty.

The barn is a large, commodious, stone building, divided into three apartments; one occupied by the resident doctors and apothecary; one, which contained forty bedsteads, by the male, and the other by the female convalescents, which contained fifty-seven.

At some distance from the west of the hospital, was erected a frame building to store the coffins and deposit the dead, until they were sent to a place of interment.

Besides the nurses employed in the house, there were two cooks, four labourers, and three washerwomen, constantly employed for the use of the hospital.

The sick were visited twice a day by two physicians, Dr. Deveze and Dr. Benjamin Duffield,* whose prescriptions were executed by three resident physicians and the apothecary.

* Very soon after the organization of the Committee, Dr. Deveze, a respectable French physician, from Cape François, offered his services in the line of his profession at Bushhill. Dr. Benjamin Duffield did the same. Their offers were accepted, and they have both attended with great punctuality. Dr. Deveze renounced all other practice, which, at that period, would have been very lucrative, when there was such general demand for physicians. The Committee, in consideration of the services of these two gentlemen, presented Dr. Duffield with five hundred, and Dr. Deveze with fifteen hundred dollars.

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