Steven J. Peitzman is Professor of Medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine. His historical work includes the book A New and Untried Course: Woman’s Medical College and Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850 – 1998 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000) and articles about medicine and medical education in Philadelphia and Germantown.
Free clinics known as dispensaries served the “working poor” of European, British, and American cities from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Paid or volunteer physicians saw patients on site or at their homes in the dispensary’s district, caring for both minor ailments and more serious diseases. The Philadelphia Dispensary for the Medical Relief ...
Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century stood shamefully high among large American cities in rates of death from typhoid fever (also known as enteric fever). Caused by a type of Salmonella bacterium, the disease had become common in Philadelphia and other cities with crowded populations, inadequate disposal of human waste, and lack of water treatment. ...
Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy