A History of Friends Hospital
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Friends Hospital is still an "asylum" in the true sense of the word...a refuge or retreat, a place where patients have the opportunity to begin the healing process. |
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When the Religious Society of Friends founded Friends Hospital in 1813, it was with the belief that within every person is that of God or "the true light that lighteth every person that cometh into the world." (John1:9) Adhering to that conviction, the Friends, more commonly known as Quakers, viewed insanity as a temporary impediment to reaching that of God within and saw it as their mission to help the mentally ill out of the darkness. With this mission in mind, they founded the nation's first private institution dedicated solely to the care of the mentally ill. It was called "the Asylum" and renamed "Friends Hospital" in 1914. Although the Friends established the hospital as a safe haven in which to care for their own, they soon opened the doors to the afflicted of all denominations.
Unlike many who viewed the insane as less than human, and therefore treated them less than humanely, Quakers saw the mentally ill as brethren capable of living a moral, ordered existence if treated with kindness, dignity, and respect in comfortable surroundings. They called their approach to curing insanity "moral treatment." In combination with ever advancing medical treatments, moral treatment has guided and continues to guide the care of the mentally ill at Friends Hospital.
Founding
and Building Friends' Asylum
Among those individuals instrumental in founding Friends' Asylum was Thomas Scattergood, a traveling minister whose visit to England between 1794 and 1800 took him to the The York Retreat, a prototype for Friends Hospital as well as many other mental hospitals. There he observed firsthand founder William Tuke's use of moral treatment. Several years later, an encounter with a depressed woman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania whom Scattergood aided with gentle and kind counseling spurred him to action.
On February 4, 1811, the Burlington Meeting, to which Scattergood belonged, raised concern for the establishment of an insane asylum in Philadelphia. This concern was forwarded to the Burlington Quarterly Meeting; at the same time, the Western Quarterly Meeting showed a similar interest. In response to both Quarterly Meetings, on April 15, 1811, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting appointed a committee to consider provisions for afflicted Friends. The committee recommended that an asylum be built and controlled by contributors for which an association titled "the Contributors to the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the use of their Reason" was formed. The Contributors held their first meeting on April 14, 1813, and adopted a constitution at their meeting in June.
A Home in the Country
In 1813, "the Contributors to the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of their Reason" purchased a 52-acre farm in Oxford Township near Frankford, located roughly five miles north of Philadelphia. The Contributors' selection of this site would provide an ideal retreat for those suffering from mental illness. The area surrounding Friends Asylum became increasingly suburban in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as improvements in transportation -- first the Frankford Branch of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and then Roosevelt Boulevard -- brought more residential development. Within this development, the Asylum grounds remained an oasis of lawns, meadows, woodlands, vegetable and flower gardens, orchards and handsome buildings. By 1911 the Asylum expanded its property to roughly 100 contiguous acres.
A Haven for the Mentally Ill
The building to accommodate fifty patients opened its doors on May 15, 1817. Of the 66 patients admitted during its first three years, Friends Asylum cured, or discharged as "much improved" about 25 of these men and women, which, in light of the fact that the Asylum accepted many patients considered incurable, demonstrated the potential of moral treatment. It was generally accepted by Benjamin Rush and others that "the longer its remote and predisposing causes have acted upon the brain, and mind, the more dangerous the disease," and yet most of the patients accepted at Friends had mental illness lasting for more than a decade before being admitted. Rush also felt that insanity was "rarely cured in old people," yet the average age of the patients at Friends was forty, and five patients older than 65 were admitted. And in the first three years of its existence, the Asylum had only five re-admissions.
The design of Friends' Asylum placed patient rooms along only one side of corridors to maximize the circulation of fresh air and light that were believed to benefit a patient's recovery. Two patient wings were added to the asylum in 1827.
Moral treatment entails recognition of the mentally ill as fellow men and brethren to be cared for with dignity, respect, kindness, and love within comfortable, pleasant surroundings. At Friends' Asylum, the care came from an entity known as "the family" and an organization called "the house." The family consisted of the patients, staff, the Superintendent and his family, the resident physician, and any visiting physicians or managers. Genuine concern, patience, and attentiveness shown by staff fostered the patients' cooperation, respect and responsibilities toward "the family." In short, moral treatment at Friends' Asylum centered around the ideal of well-ordered, well-disciplined Quaker family living within the familiar routine of a domestic farm economy.
Physical exercise and productive activity were used as a means to help patients recover from mental illness. During the early decades of the Asylum, patients spent several hours a day employed around the house and grounds which supported a self-sufficient farm. By the mid-nineteenth century, the emphasis on physical exercise shifted away from work therapy towards recreational therapy, although many patients continued light chores such as raking leaves and maintaining walkways. In 1879, Friends Hospital built the first greenhouse to enhance its long tradition of horticultural therapy. Additions to the campus in 1880 provided accommodations for 90 patients.
In 1916 Friends' Asylum -- by then renamed Friends Hospital -- expanded its holdings once again when it acquired 326 acres of farmland in Trevose. This farm had a house, called Bensalem Mansion, which was opened to patients as a convalescent home in 1920. Both properties have since been sold.
To make room for more patients in the 1970s and 80s, the Bonsall and Tuke Buildings were completed, creating the Hospital's current 192-bed capacity.
In 1980, Friends Hospital opened the Greystone Program on the grounds of the hospital. The Greystone Program is based on a similar philosophy -- to remove long-term patients from a hospital setting to a home. A companion home was built in 1989 and named Hillside House.
For more detailed historical information about Friends Hospital check out:
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