Abstract
Scholars have traced the American hospital's development from last-resort refuge for the poor and dying in the eighteenth century to the principal health care institution for people of all classes by the early twentieth century. With the exception of Charles Rosenberg, how-ever, few have paid much attention to the dispensary, where far more of the urban poor received medical treatment than in hospitals during the same period.1 This study of the Philadelphia Dispensary traces its history through three periods.