Allegheny at the foot of Montgomery’s Hill. A rented house 
in the spring of 1848 was selected for the purpose of caring for 
the sick and needy but no patients were admitted until the 
spring of 1849. 
When the city of Pittsburgh was celebrating the return of 
the soldiers from the Mexican War, Dr. Passavant found 
three soldiers sick with fever neglected in the boats at the 
dock. With the aid of a theological student, Asa Waters, he 
-ransferred them to the vacant infirmary, where, in the ab- 
sence of nurses, the doctor himself with Mr. Waters nursed 
them back to health. 
In the summer of that year cholera suddenly made its 
appearance at different points on the river; a number of these 
patients were admitted to the infirmary. This caused so 
great a panic that the neighbors threatened to stone the 
building and Dr. Passavant was obliged to load his patients 
into a wagon and seek a safe refuge for them before night. 
He sought guidance in prayer and God led him across the 
sity to Lacyville, where he found room for his wagon load of 
patients in Dr. Lacy’s Female Seminary, which was empty at 
that time. Dr. Passavant bought this building together with 
a garden, for $5,500, and after four deaconesses arrived from 
Germany to carry on the work, the Pittsburgh Infirmary was 
Jedicated on July 17, 1849, to be a refuge for the worthy sick 
of every religion, color or race. 
In 1850 the field adjoining the infirmary, containing up- 
wards of four acres, was purchased for the sum of $12,000. 
Of this that portion bordering on Dinwiddie street was divid- 
ed into 28 lots and sold for $500 a lot to pay for the property. 
A pew infirmary building, 60x40 feet and four stories high, 
was erected in 1851 on the newly purchased land. The ac- 
~omodations it afforded were for forty patients, besides room 
for the sisters, of which there were five. Sister Louisa Mar- 
thens of Pittsburgh was the first American deaconess to enter. 
This new building cost $8,000 and is still used as a part of the 
hospital. The number of patients admitted in 1852 was 272. 
Expenditures for the entire year were $2,432.35. The most 
interesting years were 1853 and 1854—when admissions for 
the two years amounted to 536—of those 38 were typhoid; 21