Little-known Nathan Mossell, doctor who founded Philly's first hospital for black patients

Few physicians can claim as many "firsts" as Nathan Mossell.

In 1882, Mossell became the first African American to receive a medical diploma from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Not long after, the Philadelphia County Medical Society inducted him as its first black member.

And in his most significant contribution to his field, Mossell in 1895 founded Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Nursing Training School, the first hospital for black patients in Philadelphia, and only the second such facility in the nation.

Yet his achievements are little remarked today. Even the plaque that marks the site of the hospital he created does not mention his name.

Indeed, Mossell's own view of founding Douglass was decidedly bittersweet.

"We wish it had not been necessary to establish the Douglass Hospital," he said at the opening ceremony in October 1895. A segregated hospital "means extravagance, inefficiency, duplications of effort, and is undemocratic in that it establishes caste."

It was 30 years after the Civil War in a city renowned as the cradle of freedom, yet it was arguably the worst period of race relations in U.S. history. Mossell, who fought enormous obstacles including opposition from white medical students, held on to the dream that hospitals would integrate.

Yet Mossell appeared to have little choice but to back down and open a black hospital.

Despite his prestigious degree from the nation's first medical school and his postgraduate training with renowned surgeon D. Hayes Agnew at Pennsylvania Hospital, no white hospital in Philadelphia would give him admitting privileges.

A decade into his career as a gynecologist, Mossell still treated patients at his home in South Philadelphia.

But it may have been more than exasperation that pushed him to open Douglass Hospital.

On a hot summer day in August 1890, Mossell opened his front door to find Ella C. Brown, a 24-year-old black prostitute. She told him she was homeless and suffering from abdominal pain and uterine bleeding.

Mossell diagnosed fibroid tumors. He treated her, but knew she needed a safe place to rest. He advised Brown to go to the Blockley Almshouse, a charity hospital that wasn't well regarded then for the quality of its care. But Mossell knew his patient had nowhere else to go.

A couple of weeks later, Mossell opened his front door to find a reporter from The Inquirer working on an article about a woman who had delivered a dead infant at the Almshouse and contended that Mossell had charged her $35 for initiating an abortion.

Abortions had been illegal in Pennsylvania since the 1860s; performing one could mean the loss of the doctor's medical license.

Alarmed at what the reporter told him, Mossell immediately took a carriage to the Almshouse. He spoke to the white physicians who treated Brown. They provided a written statement that Mossell didn't know she was pregnant.

Still, Mossell was arrested, his bail set at an extraordinary $3,000 - close to $80,000 today.

Days later, an article appeared in The Inquirer with the headline, "Ella Brown's Serious Charge."

In court, it wasn't Mossell's education and achievements that saved him, but the testimony of the Almshouse's white medical staff.

The willingness of the court to take up such a seemingly weak case highlights the tenuous position of Mossell in particular and black doctors in general. Not only were they racially marginalized, but also, professionally, the field of medicine had yet to earn the social respect the profession receives today.

The judge, after hearing from the white doctors, dismissed the case, even without hearing Brown's testimony. This may explain why the lawsuit in not listed in the Philadelphia court records. The only verification of the event is in the two Inquirer articles on the case, and the Almshouse patient records.

The case of Ella Brown marked one of the first times in which Mossell's reputation was on the line. But it wouldn't be the last. A decade later, the majority of his medical staff at Douglass abandoned him to form the city's second black hospital, Mercy, contending that Mossell operated the hospital in a tyrannical fashion to benefit his own professional needs.

He opened the hospital to give better care to patients, as well as to train black nurses and doctors. Yet Mossell insisted on doing most surgeries himself; according to the hospital's first annual report, he performed more than two-thirds of all surgeries.

Mossell retired from the hospital in 1933, but kept practicing medicine until shortly before he died at age 90.

In 1948, two years after Mossell's death, the two black hospitals merged to form Mercy Douglass Hospital, which closed in 1973.

In addition to his achievements as a physician, Mossell also was a civil-rights leader in Philadelphia, cofounding the local NAACP chapter, among other accomplishments. Yet his prickly personality and determination to succeed on his own terms may hint at why the historical marker outside Douglass Hospital's original location at 1512 Lombard St. fails to mention the name of its founder.

Or why, despite his status as Penn's first black doctor, Mossell has received surprisingly little attention for the path he trod for future African American medical students.

eviheilbrunn@gmail.com