Public address delivered by Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy to the Masons and others who built the MGH at the foundation-laying ceremony.

I am requested by the Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital to express to you … congratulations on this interesting occasion. You and they will be pleased to accept the thanks of the Trustees for the countenance and aid you have given this institution by thus condescending to assist by laying its foundations, according to the rules of art, and with those solemn and mysterious forms and ceremonies which ancient wisdom has prescribed.

Indeed, the foundations of a noble charity have this day been laid, a charity destined to confer lasting blessings on future times, as it has already conferred immortal honor on the present; - a charity, of which it well becomes a citizen of Massachusetts to speak in the language of pride and exultation.

Quoted in A History of the Massachusetts General Hospital (To August 5, 1851), by Nathaniel Bowditch (Trustees from the Bowditch Fund, 1872).