This collection includes selections from Friends Hospital records, including annual reports and superintendents’ daybooks. Friends Hospital was founded by Philadelphia-area Quakers in 1813 under the name ‘The Asylum for Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason.’ Their mission statement was: “To provide for the suitable accommodation of persons who are or may be deprived of the use of their reason and the maintenance of an asylum for their reception, which is intended to furnish, besides requisite medical aid, such tender, sympathetic attention as may soothe their agitated minds, and under the Divine Blessing, facilitate their recovery.” In 1817, the hospital accepted its first patients. Friends Asylum was the first private psychiatric hospital in the United States, and one of the first mental hospitals to use moral treatment, which eschewed corporal punishment for the patients and advocated treating them with respect and compassion.