Ante-Bellum Public Health
•1808 The City of Charleston establishes a Board of Health with 13 commissioners.
•1814 The Ladies’ Benevolent Society of Charleston begins volunteer care of the sick and needy in Charleston - this is the starting point for nursing care in South Carolina.
•1824 Medical College of South Carolina is established by the state Legislature, but not funded. The faculty establish it, anyway.
•1828 Robert Mills Building opens as the sixth state supported mental asylum in the United States.
The Ladies’ Benevolent Society of Charleston was formed in 1814 for the “giving of skillful and sympathetic relief to numbers of the sick poor within the limits of said city.”  The Society provided assistance to the poor in the form of food, fuel, clothing, and nursing care. It was sponsored by contributions from individuals and churches and was non-denominational.  This Society was the first of its kind in the country. It was the origin of visiting nursing programs and public health nursing.

Rosa Heyward Clarke. 1937. “History and development of public health nursing in South Carolina.”  Unpublished Master’s thesis. University of South Carolina.