John Bellers (1654-1725) was an influential Quaker in late Stuart England. Among his close friends was William Penn, the founder of the State of Pennsylvania. Like Chamberlen and in every way as prolific in his ideas, Bellers published many proposals for the public good.
In 1714 he published “An Essay Towards the Improvement of Physick in Twelve Proposals, By which the Lives of many Thousands of the Rich as well as of the Poor may be Saved Yearly.” In this he set out a number of proposals that amounted to a publicly funded national health scheme. He advocated, for instance, not only for the building of hospitals for the poor at or near London and at the two universities (Oxford and Cambridge), but also for the building of specialist hospitals for the blind, the insane and the poor (Articles I, III and VI), a public medical research centre (Proposal V), a publicly paid doctor in every parish (Article VII) and a better information system for the distribution of medical knowledge (Article X).
Bellers also proposed that physicians and surgeons should be sent to the East and West Indies and to the Americas to “seek what may be found useful among the Indians and Negroes.” He suggested that ships’ doctors should be instructed to make such discoveries of new medicines as they could. In support of this idea, he noted that many valuable remedies had already been found abroad. “It is not to be doubted that there are many others yet unknown to Europe.” He credits Negroes with having excellent remedies for the “dry gripes” [influenza]. “An account,” he writes, “of any foreign plants, or insects, are not only a pretty amusement to botanists and natural historians, but may be very needful to be brought hither in order to have their medicinal virtue come to be better understood”.
Perhaps not coincidentally, in 1713 William Penn was instrumental in the opening of almshouses for the sick in Philadelphia. Also in Philadelphia, in 1751 Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond founded the first incorporated hospital in the American colonies.