Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/185

Rh site of which a few years afterwards Mrs. Masters erected her Mansion, elsewhere referred to, which was the precursor of the Washington residence. From its inception, at the close of 1750, Franklin had been its guide. His friend Dr. Thomas Bond originated the movement, and while these two were busy in arranging for the beginning of the Academy to train the mind of youth, they found time to plan an institution to provide means for healing the suffering bodies of the aged and the injured, or as Franklin expressively styles it, " for the relief of the Sick and Miserable;" and on 7 February, 1751, a bill was passed the Provincial Assembly incorporating " The Contributors to the Pennsylvania Hospital." Franklin had written up the matter in the Gazette, and employed other active means to interest the community in the project. And at the first meeting of the Contributors held at the State House, a board of managers was chosen, of which Benjamin Franklin was made President. Of the managers, twelve in number, Franklin, Bond, and Peters, were trustees of the Academy; and another Manager was Hon. John Smith, who in a twelvemonth became the originator of an institution for effecting insurances on buildings, in the furtherance of which he secured the like co-operation from Franklin that Thomas Bond had for his Hospital. Funds came in, and pending the selection of a permanent location, Judge Kinsey's house was rented, rules and regulations for its management were adopted, and Lloyd Zachary, Thomas and Phineas Bond, Thomas Cadwalader, Samuel Preston Moore, and John Redman were appointed the first surgeons and physicians, who offered to attend the patients gratuitously for three years. In December, 1754, the managers secured a block of ground, distant from the outskirts of the built-up portions of the city, being the entire square south of Spruce Street and west of Eighth Street. 4 Provision was at once made for a building, and the corner stone of what we know as the East Wing was laid 28 May, 1755, with 4 The Managers purchased for the erection of their Buildings the plot of ground known as Society Square on 15 November, 1754,00 Pine Street between Eighth and Ninth Sts., and to this was subsequently added the balance (about onefourth) of the block extending north to Spruce Street of the same width by gift of Thomas and Richard Penn under patent of 10 November, 1767. Dr. Morton's History of the Pennsylvania Hespital, 1895, p. 270.