The Woman’s Hospital at Philadelphia was founded in 1862 during the excitements of the great Civil War. It was the outgrowth of a singularly brutal incident. In 1861 the resources of the college became entirely exhausted; there was not enough money in the treasury to hire lecture rooms, and it was reluctantly decided that the lecture course must be suspended. Permission, however, had been obtained for the students to visit the wards at the Blockley almshouse, and thither they went under the tiny escort of Dr. Ann Preston. On one occasion, in order to effectually disconcert the women students, one of the young men suddenly introduced into the room a male patient perfectly nude. The insult stung the friends of the college to renewed exertions, which were not relaxed until funds were collected sufficient to purchase a house in which might be opened a hospital where women could obtain clinical instruction by themselves. A lecture room was rented in this house, and lectures were resumed in the fall of 1862. From this date, the obstetrical chair of the college, at least, was fairly supplied with clinical material. The double institution, college and hospital, was first lifted out of its period of depressing struggle, when, at the death of its generous president, the Hon. Wm. S. Pierce, it received a bequest of $100,000. With this, a really beautiful building was erected for the use of the college. Adjoining the college, soon sprang up a separate building for a general hospital, which has, however, always been predominantly gynæcological. Later was added a special maternity pavilion. The report of 1889 reads as follows: Hospital staff: Resident physicians, 1; internes, 6; visiting physicians, 6; district physicians, 12; in-patients, 583;[78] dispensary patients, 6365; patients treated at home, 695. The woman’s hospital in Boston, the New England Hospital for Women and Children, was also founded during the war, and incorporated in 1862. The women who engaged in it were all heavily burdened by the great public anxieties of the time. But the very nature of these anxieties, the keen interest aroused in hospital work and in nursing organizations, helped to direct attention to the women’s hospitals. In New York, the first meeting to consider the organization of nursing for the army was held in the parlors of the Infirmary, and at the suggestion of Elizabeth Blackwell. This little meeting was the germ from which subsequently developed the splendid organization of the Sanitary Commission.