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Page 11
Among the most interesting formulations and potential contributions of
psychiatry are those reaching out toward jurisprudence. Psychiatry deals
pre-eminently with the variety and differences of human personalities.
To correct or supplement a human system apparently enslaved by concern
about precedent and baffling rules of evidence inherited from the days
of cruel and arbitrary kings, the demand for justice has called for
certain remedies. Psychiatry still plays a disgraceful r�le in the
so-called expert testimony, largely a prostitution of medical authority
in the service of legal methods. Yet, out of it all there has arisen the
great usefulness of the psychiatrist in the juvenile and other courts.
There it is shown that if psychiatry is to help, it should be taken for
granted that the person indicted on a charge should thereby become
subject to a complete and unreserved study of all the facts, subject to
cross-examination, to be sure, but before all accessible to complete and
unreserved study. This would mean a substantial participation of law in
the promotion of knowledge of facts and constructive activity, and a
conception of indeterminate sentence not merely in the service of
leniency but in the service of the best protection of the public, and,
if necessary, lasting detention of those who cannot be reformed, before
they have had to do their worst. Whoever is clearly indicted for
breaking the laws of social compatibility should not merely invite a
spirit of revenge, but should, through the indictment, surrender
automatically to legalized authority endowed with the right and duty of
an unlimited investigation of the facts as they are.
Looking back then, you can see how the history of the human thought
about what we call mind and psyche displayed some strange reactions of
the practical man, the scientist, the philosopher, and theologian toward
one of the most important and practical problems. It is difficult to
realize what it means to arrive at ever-more-workable formulations and
methods of approach. We do not have to be mind-shy _or_ body-shy any
longer. To-day we can attack the facts as we find them, without that
disturbing obsession of having to translate them first into something
artificial before we can really study them and work with them. Since we
have reached a sane pluralism with a justifiable conviction of the
fundamental consistency of it all, a satisfaction with what we modestly
call formulation rather than definition and with an appreciation of
relativity, we have at last an orderly and natural field and method from
which nobody need shy.
The century that has passed since the inspiration of a few men of the
Society of the New York Hospital to provide for the mentally sick has
cleared the atmosphere a great deal. We can start the second century
freer and unhampered in many ways. Much has been added, and more than
ever do we appreciate the position of just such a hospital as that of
Bloomingdale as a centre of healing and as a leader of public opinion
and as a contributor to progress.
The Bloomingdale Hospital has a remarkable function. It is a more or
less privileged forerunner in standards and policies. Without having to
carry the burdens of the whole State with its sweeping and sometimes
distant power and its forced economy, a semiprivate hospital like
Bloomingdale aims to minister to a slightly select group, especially
those who are in the difficult position of greater sensitiveness but
moderate means in days of sickness. It serves the part of our community
which more than any other sets the pace of the civilization about
us--the intelligent aspiring workers who may not have reached the goal
of absolute financial independence. It creates the standard of which we
may dream that it might become the standard of the whole State.
When we review the roster of Superintendents--from John Neilson to Pliny
Earle and from Charles Nichols, Tilden Brown, and Samuel Lyon down to
the present head, our highly esteemed friend and coworker William L.
Russell--and the names of the members of the staff, many of whom have
reached the highest places in the profession, and last, but not least,
the names of the Governors of The Society of the New York Hospital, we
cannot help being impressed by the forceful representation of both the
profession and the public, and we recognize the wide range of influence.
Instead of depending on frequently changing policies regulated from the
outside under the influence of the greater and lesser lights and
exigencies of State and municipal organization, the New York Hospital
has its self-perpetuating body of Governors chosen from the most
public-spirited and thoughtful representatives of our people.
Bloomingdale thus has always had a remarkable Board of Governors, who,
from contact with the General Hospital and with this special division,
are in an unusual position to see the practical aspects of the great
change that is now taking place. You see how the division of psychiatry
has developed from practically a detention-house to an asylum, and
finally to a hospital with all the medical equipment and laboratories of
the General Hospital. And you begin to see psychiatry, with its methods
of study and management of life problems as well as of specific brain
diseases, infections, and gastrointestinal and endocrine conditions,
become more and more helpful, even a necessity, in the wards and
dispensary of the General Hospital on 16th Street. The layman cannot,
perhaps, delve profitably into the details of such a highly and broadly
specialized type of work. But he can readily take a share in the best
appreciation of the general philosophy and policy of it all.
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