From 1857 until 1865, the indoor department of the Infirmary was limited to a single ward for poor lying-in women, and which contained but twelve beds. But in the dispensary, several thousand patients a year were treated, and the young physicians living in the hospital also visited the sick poor at their own homes. The persevering efforts of the Blackwells, moreover, finally succeeded in opening one medical institution of the city to their students, the great Demilt dispensary. As early as 1862, the succession of women students who annually pressed forward to fill the two vacancies at the Infirmary patiently waited in the clinic rooms of Demilt, and there gleaned many crumbs of experience and information.[76] These, together with the practical experience gained in the obstetrical ward and the out-practice of the Infirmary, afforded the first and for a long time the only opportunity for clinical instruction open to women students in America. In 1865, a medical college was added to the Infirmary; a new building was purchased for the hospital, which became enlarged to the capacity of 35 beds. For the first time it then began to receive private patients, chiefly from among self-supporting women of limited income, to hundreds of whom the resources of the Infirmary has proved invaluable. Their pay, though modest, has contributed materially to the resources of the hospital for the treatment of entirely indigent patients.[77] The report for 1869 shows a hospital staff of: Resident physician, 1; internes, 3; visiting physicians, 3; associate physicians, 3; out-visiting physician, 1. Total number in-patients, 342; Total number dispensary patients, 4825; Total number patients treated at home, 768.