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Featured Article Of The Week

Allentown State Hospital


AllentownPA 4.jpg

In 1901, the Germantown Homeopathic Medical Society of Philadelphia assisted in introducing and furthering a bill in the state legislature to provide for the selection of a site and construction of a state hospital for the insane. The hospital was to be under homeopathic management and control. A number of areas were evaluated before the Rittersville section of Lehigh County was accepted as the construction site. The cornerstone for the hospital was laid on June 27, 1904, but because of delays in financial appropriations, the hospital was not completed until 1912. The hospital was opened on October 3, 1912 at a cost of $1,931,270.

The first admissions were patients from Norristown and Danville State Hospitals, which were both overcrowded at that time. The hospital at Rittersville, or the Allentown Homeopathic Hospital for the Insane as it was called at the time, was the first homeopathic institution of its kind in Pennsylvania. The first Superintendent, Dr. Henry Klopp, was a homeopathic physician and the Hospital was closely allied with the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. The homeopathic medical approach was gradually changed to the more standard medical model and the homeopathic title was dropped from the name, the Hospital then being referred to as Allentown State Hospital. Click here for more...