[1] Initially referred to as the West Philadelphia General Hospital, it was later renamed in honor of Richard Sherwood Satterlee,[2] a physician from Seneca County, New York, who was stationed with the United States Army at Fort Winnebago in Portage, Wisconsin, during the Black Hawk War, and then rose to prominence and was brevetted as a lieutenant colonel, colonel, and brigadier general during America's Civil War "for diligent care and attention in procuring proper army supplies, as Medical Purveyor, and for economy and fidelity in the disbursement of large sums of money.

The hospital's "chapel was so small," according to historians at the Catholic Historical Research Center in Philadelphia, "that some sisters had to exit the room so others could enter and receive Holy Communion."

[4][5][6] The facility's commanding officer was Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes, a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and graduate of the Westtown School and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School who had achieved a measure of fame as an Arctic explorer with the Second Grinnell Expedition of 1853-55 and with his own 1860-61 expedition in search of the Open Polar Sea before joining the United States Army as a surgeon.

"Archbishop James Wood also visited Satterlee several times to confirm many adult converts," the Catholic Historical Research Center historians wrote.

[8] Over the course of the hospital's operation, Satterlee's physicians and nurses treated some 50,000 sick and wounded people, losing only 260, a notable accomplishment considering the sanitary conditions and medical techniques of the day.