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Printed and handwritten Medical Study ticket Signed as Secretary, Illinois General Hospital of the Lake. 3x4¾"/

Ticket of admission to J.M. Hunt for “Clinical Instruction” at the first public hospital in Chicago – and the first “teaching hospital” in the United States. Incorporated in 1849 with Dr. Evans as one of its three Charter-Trustees and Physician to the Female Wards, the Hospital came under the administration of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy in 1851; when this ticket was issued a year later, the name had just been formally changed to Mercy Hospital and Orphan Asylum. Dr. John Evans (1814-1897) was first superintendent of the Indiana Central State Hospital before moving to Chicago. When he signed this ticket, he was also responsible for founding Northwestern University in the Chicago suburb named Evanston in his honor. His old friend, President Abraham Lincoln, appointed Evans the second Territorial Governor of Colorado, where he founded railroads, schools (Denver University) and parks. The subject of a 1969 biography (“Frontier Capitalist”) published by the Colorado State Historical Society, letters and documents signed by Evans are rare – especially from this early period of his life as a physician.