{image}

The Practice of Medicine

Medicine was practiced in the colonies long before 1751. Hospital practice began with Ben Franklin's founding the Pennsylvania Hospital -- for decades the only one in America. Dr. Thomas Bond envisioned hospitals as charities, but Franklin leaned toward the notion hospitals might pay for themselves by getting sick people back to work.

In 1913 the Flexner Report, supported by the Rockefeller family, urged a research focus by teaching hospitals, and during World War II Vannevar Bush devised federal funding to extend Franklin's plan to get sick people back to work.

In fact, life expectancy expanded by almost forty years, and early retirement usually seems to replace sickness costs as a limit. Some day, Franklin's vision may triumph, but require another century. Successful in combating failure, we have --so far-- failed to balance the cost of success with the expense of achieving it.