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Samuel Powel Griffitts

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Samuel Powel Griffitts
BornJuly 21, 1759
Philadelphia
DiedMay 12, 1826(1826-05-12) (aged 66)
OccupationPhysician
SpouseMary Fishbourne
Children7
RelativesSamuel Powel (uncle)
Thomas Morgan Rotch (great-grandson)

Samuel Powel Griffitts (July 21, 1759 – May 12, 1826, sometimes also written as "Griffiths") was an American physician, widely regarded as the founder, in 1786, of the Philadelphia Dispensary (a free clinic for poor people).[1][2][3] He was an early member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1785.[4]

Life

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Coat of Arms of Samuel Powel Griffitts

Griffitts was born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia, the third son of William and Abigail Powel Griffitts.[2] In 1776, he entered the College of Philadelphia, where he studied medicine with Adam Kuhn, a physician and botanist who had been a pupil of Linnaeus.[5]

His education was interrupted by the American Revolution, particularly the Philadelphia campaign. Together with his classmate Caspar Wistar, Griffitts was one of the medical volunteers who treated wounded soldiers after the nearby Battle of Germantown.[5] After the British occupation of Philadelphia disrupted programs at the College of Philadelphia, Griffitts finished his degree at the University of the State of Pennsylvania in July 1781.[6]

Upon completion of his medical degree in 1781, Griffitts sought training in Europe, as did many physicians of his generation.[7] Benjamin Rush gave him a list of eighteen recommendations for medical students in Europe:[7]

Rush recommended that .. Griffitts attend lectures on natural philosophy as well as on medical subjects, visit the hospitals, noting the prescriptions and modes of treatment, spend a few hours daily for some weeks in a chemical laboratory and apothecary's shop, and acquire a library...and spend an hour daily for three months on dancing lessons.

Griffitts went first to Paris and then to Montpellier, but transferred his studies to London as soon as hostilities ended, writing to Rush in 1783 that although London was "the Metropolis of the whole world for Practical Medicine" the French hospitals were cleaner and had better nursing arrangements.[7] In June 1783, Griffitts moved to Edinburgh for a year, where he studied with William Cullen[1] before returning to Philadelphia in the spring of 1784.[2]

After returning to Philadelphia, one of his first professional actions was to work toward establishing the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first charity clinic in the United States. Although his contemporaries regarded Griffitts himself as its founder, Griffitts credited a visiting lecturer Henry Moyes with first proposing the idea of a free clinic to him and to his uncle Samuel Powel in 1785.[2][8] (Powel, his mother's brother, had been Philadelphia's last colonial mayor (1775–1776) and would later be its mayor again (1789–1790).)[9]

Funding for the Philadelphia Dispensary would come from subscriptions, while physicians were expected to volunteer their services. Soon 320 subscriptions were gathered and a building was found; the clinic first opened early in 1786. Griffitts headed the list of the dispensary's first doctors and continued to make daily visits to its patients for more than forty years.[2] Griffitts later played a large role in creating two more Philadelphia dispensaries as the city's population continued to grow.[6] According to his biographer Gouverneur Emerson, Griffitts "may be fairly considered as the father of the dispensaries of his native city."[2]

He was also a member of the Humane Society and the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.[10] 

In 1792, he was elected Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Pennsylvania,[11][12] and held this position for four years before resigning it to Benjamin Smith Barton. Griffitts continued practicing medicine and serving the community for the remainder of his life until succumbing to a sudden illness in 1826.[11]

Family

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He had seven children through his marriage to Mary Fishbourne, daughter of Philadelphia Mayor William Fishbourne. His mother's brother Samuel Powel, twice mayor of Philadelphia, was also a member of the American Philosophical Society.[4] His great grandson was Thomas Morgan Rotch.[13][14]

References

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  1. ^ a b Kelly, Howard A.; Burrage, Walter L. (1920). "Griffitts, Samuel Powel". American Medical Biographies. Samuel Powel Griffitts, founder of the Philadelphia Dispensary, was born in Philadelphia, July 21, 1759, the son of William and Abigail Powel Griffitts...He was the first person to actively engage in the establishment of a dispensary and it was largely owing to his efforts that the Pennsylvania Dispensary was founded in 1786, he serving as manager and attending physician and for forty years a daily visitor. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, an active member of the Humane Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society and in 1787 became one of the original members of the College of Physicians, a body which in 1817 made him its vice-president. He was a member of the committee that made a pharmacopoeia for the College.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Emerson, Gouverneur (1827). Biographical Memoir of Dr. Samuel Powel Griffitts. J. Harding. p. 9. That Dr. Griffitts was the first person who actively engaged in the establishment of a Dispensary in Philadelphia rests upon the most respectable testimony. But the credit of having originally proposed the plan he has ingenuously ascribed to another, in a short manuscripts written by him, and left among his papers
  3. ^ Gordon, John Woolf (2004). Colonial And Revolutionary Families Of Pennsylvania. Genealogical Publishing Company. pp. 112–113. ISBN 978-0-8063-5239-8. He was professor of Materia Medica at the University 1791-6: was founder of the Philadelphia Dispensary; one of the founders of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, its secretary in 1788 and vice-president in 1818. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1785.
  4. ^ a b Bell, Whitfield J. Jr. (1997). Patriot-improvers: biographical sketches of members of the American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia: The Society. ISBN 0-87169-226-0. Three weeks later, Powel himself was down with the [yellow] fever...his nephew Samuel Powel Griffitts, now a doctor, stayed with him night and day, but his case was fatal and at six o'clock in the morning of 29 September [1793] he died (page 268)..."To his sister Abigail Powel Griffitts, he bequeathed a small annuity (page 269)
  5. ^ a b Middleton, William S. (November 1, 1938). "Samuel Powel Griffitts". Annals of Medical History. 10 (6): 474–490. PMC 7932674. PMID 33943225. S2CID 233717054. Among the voluntary first aid workers at Germantown were Caspar Wistar and Samuel Powel Griffitts; and in both, this experience weighed heavily in the choice of a profession. Adam Kuhn, a student and friend of Linnaeus, became Griffitts' preceptor and the intimacy between the two grew with the years.
  6. ^ a b "NOTICE OF DR. SAMUEL POWEL GRIFFITTS". Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 16: clvi–clviii. 1887. Retrieved July 31, 2021. During forty years, with very few exceptions, he was a daily visitor at the Dispensary. To meet the demands of the poor for medical relief, caused by a large increase of population, a dispensary was established in Southwark and one in the Northern Liberties in 1816. In the foundation of these additional charities he was probably no less actively interested than he had been, thirty years before, in instituting the first : so that, as Dr. Emerson says, 'he may be fairly considered as the father of the dispensaries of his native city.'
  7. ^ a b c Bell, Whitfield J. (Jr.) (1943). "Philadelphia Medical Students in Europe, 1750-1800". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 67 (1): 1–29. Retrieved July 29, 2021. To an English correspondent the elder Dr. Shippen wrote, 'My son has had his education in the best college in this part of the country, and has been studying physic with me, besides which he has had the opportunity of seeing the practice of every gentleman of note in our city. But for want of that variety of operations and those frequent dissections which are common in older countries, I must send him to Europe.'
  8. ^ Konkle, Burton Alva; Anders, James Meschter (1897). Standard History of the Medical Profession of Philadelphia1897. United States: Goodspeed Bros. p. 98. During the following year 1785 a visitor, Dr. Henry Moyes who was delivering a course of lectures on natural philosophy in Philadelphia, suggested to Griffitts and to his uncle Samuel Powel the project of a free dispensary.
  9. ^ Smith, M. Earl. "Samuel Powel". Washington Library Center for Digital History. Retrieved August 7, 2021. The son of a prominent Welsh family, Powel is best known for his two terms as Mayor of Philadelphia, from 1775-1776 and from 1789-1790.1 The office of mayor lay vacant between his two terms; thus, Powel was the last colonial era mayor of Philadelphia, and the first mayor of the city after independence was secured.
  10. ^ College of Physicians of Philadelphia (1887). Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia Historical Medical Library. Philadelphia : Printed for the college. p. clvi.
  11. ^ a b The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans ... Biographical Society. 1904.
  12. ^ The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Cupples, Upham & Company. 1914.
  13. ^ The New England Journal of Medicine. Massachusetts Medical Society. 1914.
  14. ^ The Harvard Graduates' Magazine. Harvard Graduates' Magazine Association. 1914.
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