The innovation was sluggish to catch on, but new dispensaries have been open within the 1770s. In the colonies, small hospitals opened in Philadelphia in 1752, New York in 1771, and Boston (Massachusetts General Hospital) in 1811. In London, the crown allowed two hospitals to proceed their charitable work, underneath nonreligious control of city officers. The convents have been all shut down but Harkness finds that women—a few of them former nuns—had been a part of a brand new system that delivered essential medical services to folks outside their household.
Francisco de Mendoza was interested in studying the properties of these herbs and spices, in order that he would be capable of profit from the trade of these herbs and the medicines that could be produced by them. The London Dispensary opened in 1696, the first clinic in the British Empire to dispense medicines to poor sick individuals.