Sorry to disappoint, but this is not an ER-level reality tour with crash carts and flying gurneys. No, the tour of Pennsylvania Hospital is essentially a tour of the historic Pine Building, now chiefly administrative, and the only people in sight are doctors in clean scrubs and staffers in pinstriped suits. A relatively gore-free trip, the tours can be either self-guided (a pamphlet is available at the information desk) or with one of the six or so volunteers from the hospital staff. By luck, my tour guide is Stacey Peeples, the hospital archivist -- who better to relate the juicy past of the nation’s first hospital?

In 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond founded the hospital as a facility for the city's "sick-poor and lunatics," and he was aided by the fundraising genius of Benjamin Franklin. So, near the lobby, we have Benjamin West's vast painting Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple, evocative of Pennsy's attitude toward patient care throughout its history, and mental patients in particular -- the pale, gaunt "lunatic boy" was added purposely by West. (There are paintings throughout the Pine Building by Thomas Sully, Thomas Eakins and others.) The hospital, with psychiatric pioneer Dr. Benjamin Rush, offered relatively humane treatment at a time when most thought these patients were animals or possessed by demons.

By 1804, there were three parts to the hospital: the East Wing, the West Wing and the center building. Stacey swings open the tall white doors to the center portion, giving a stunning view of Pine Street and the rear of the William Penn statue on the front lawn behind the street gates. I feel, well, historical. She gestures to the lower level, which housed the mental patients' "cells," and the dry moat that encircles the building. As part of their treatment, the mentally ill were allowed to walk around and around the hospital perimeter in the dry moat -- to get fresh air and exercise, away from the "vapors" that physicians thought hovered in the air and affected people's immune systems. People walked right up to the moat, gawking and taunting the mental patients, so the hospital installed a gate; people climbed the gate, so they installed a wall; people jumped the wall, so they began charging admission to fund the care of the patients.

Horse-drawn carriages would come up the white-gravel road to the big door and admit patients, sometimes taking them straight up to the domed amphitheater, which opened in 1804. Here, then, is the first surgical amphitheater in the country, where, for 60 years, on sunny days only (gas lamps came later), doctors would perform revolutionary surgeries and teach medical students what wielding the knife was all about: tumor and gallstone removal, amputations, even cataract operations. No ether, no anesthesia. Patients had three painkilling options: get drunk, get hopped up on opium or get hit on the head with a mallet. They were put on a wooden table like the one on display, only with pockets -- to sweep "stuff" into, says Peeples. Oh, right. Same reason there was sawdust on the floor -- easy cleanup. Up to 300 people often crowded the small room (Eakins painted just such scenes of surgery-as-performance in his famous The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic). Peeples tells me that nurse/maids (always the slash, she notes) would make extra money by preparing bodies for coffins; often these women were wives of groundskeepers, cooks, stewards, etc. Sometimes patients who couldn't pay in cash did this too.

The dark-wood library opened in 1807. It features 13,000 volumes, small displays of surgical instruments, botanical drawings and porcelain from the dining hall, as well as three plaster casts of a woman who died in childbirth, made in 1762 for anatomical study. And, on the lower level of the Pine Building, amid staff offices, are exhibits about the hospital's nursing school (closed in 1974), including pins, hats, dolls and photographs.

In the lobby, a placard proclaims an old tree as a witness to the history of the hospital from 1841 to 1981. It saw hospital units of doctors and nurses sent to both World Wars, which alone seems like a righteous feat. But in its 250 years, the hospital itself also witnessed, and responded to, the yellow-fever epidemic, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and on and on.

Nothing demonstrates the pride Pennsylvania Hospital takes in innovation and risk-taking better than the story of the old fire engine, circa 1803, that sits in the Portugeuse-tiled lobby of the center building. The hospital’s board members were so proud of the engine that, before every meeting, they ceremonially tested it, just to be sure it worked.

Pennsylvania Hospital, between Eighth and Ninth sts. and Spruce and Pine sts. Call ahead for tours, Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.–4 p.m., 215-829-3270.

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November 21, 2002
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