In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at
Salem, Massachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717,
a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked
importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the
building of the first chartered hospital in the United States,
which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four
hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the
year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York
Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed,
and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of
King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church
institution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect
upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting
recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the
Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history
of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they
swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of
placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals,
where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where
more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their
number than officers of the line--a strong evidence that infection
is more dangerous than weapons of war."