THE NEW YORK HOSPITAL, DUANE STREET AND BROADWAY
The building to the left was erected in 1808 for the exclusive use ofpatients suffering from mental disorders.
A PSYCHIATRIC MILESTONE
BLOOMINGDALE HOSPITAL CENTENARY
1821-1921
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem."
—Lucretius
PRIVATELY PRINTED
BY THE SOCIETY OF THE NEW YORK HOSPITAL
1921
ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE
HOWARD TOWNSEND
BRONSON WINTHROP
R. HORACE GALLATIN
PREFACE
The opening of Bloomingdale Asylum on June 1, 1821, was an importantevent in the treatment of mental disorders and in the progress ofhumanitarian and scientific work in America. Hospital treatment forpersons suffering from mental disorders had been furnished by the NewYork Hospital since its opening in 1792, and the Governors had givenmuch thought and effort to securing the facilities needed. The treatmentconsisted, however, principally in the administration of drugs and theemployment of such other physical measures as were in vogue at thattime. Little attempt was made to study the minds of the patients or totreat them by measures directed specifically to influencing theirthoughts, feelings, and behavior, and what treatment of this characterthere was had for its object little more than the repression ofexcitement and disordered activity. The value and importance oftreatment directed to the mind had, indeed, been long recognized, but inpractice it had been subordinated to treatment of the actual and assumedphysical disorders to which the mental state of the patient wasattributed, and, in the few hospitals where persons suffering frommental disorders were received, means for its application were almost orquite entirely lacking. The establishment of Bloomingdale Asylum for thepurpose of ascertaining to what extent the recovery of the patientsmight be accomplished by moral as well as by purely medical treatmentmarked, therefore, the very earliest stages of the development inAmerica of the system of study and treatment of mental disorders whichwith increasing amplification and precision is now universally employed.
A hundred years of growth and activity in the work thus established havenow been accomplished, and it seemed fitting to the Governors of theHospital that the event should be commemorated in a way that would beappropriate to its significance and importance. It was decided that theprincipal place in the celebration should be given to the purely medicaland scientific aspects of the work, with special reference to theprogress which had been made in the direction of the practicalusefulness of psychiatry in the treatment of illness generally, and inthe management of problems of human behavior and welfare. Arrangementswere made for four addresses by physicians of conspicuous eminence intheir particular fields, and invitations to attend the exercises weresent to the leading psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists ofAmerica, and to others who were known to be specially interested in thefie