By Lesley Gist, The Gist of Freedom

Nathan Francis Mossell was an African American doctor who helped establish the first black hospital in Philadelphia, the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital, and Training School.

He established it in 1895 partly to provide care for the underserved black Philadelphia community and partly to give younger African American physicians the opportunity to have hospital internships and black nurses to gain hospital experience. Frederick Douglass Memorial became the second African American hospital in the United States after Provident Hospital founded in 1892 by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. Mossell worked at Douglass as its chief of staff and medical director until his retirement in 1933. He continued to maintain a private practice in medicine until his death in 1946.

Sources:
Rayford Whittingham Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., “Nathan Francis Mossell,” in The Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982);
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/4389/Mossell-Nathan-1856-1946.html

Penn University Archives & Records Center, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1800s/mossell_nathan_f.html
www.blackpast.org

Source: https://www.facebook.com/lesley.Gist/media_set?set=a.4273972932933.2152976.1394470264&type=3&pnref=story&__mref=message_bubble