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Page 4
MR. SHELDON
It is with profound gratification that the Governors welcome your
generous presence to-day on an occasion which means so much to us and
which has perhaps some general significance. For we are met in honor of
what is almost a unique event in our national history, the centennial
anniversary celebration of an exclusively psychopathic hospital. A
summary of its origin and development may be appropriate.
A hundred and fifty years ago the only institutions on this side of the
Atlantic which cared for mental diseases were the Pennsylvania Hospital,
chartered in 1751, a private general hospital which had accommodations
for a few mental cases, and the Eastern State Hospital for the insane,
at Williamsburg, Virginia, a public institution incorporated in 1768. No
other one of the thirteen Colonies had a hospital of any kind, general
or special. With a view of remedying this deplorable lack in New York,
steps were taken in 1769 to establish an adequate general hospital in
the City of New York. This resulted in the grant, on June 11, 1771, of
the Royal Charter of The Society of the New York Hospital. Soon
afterward the construction of the Hospital buildings began on a spacious
tract on lower Broadway opposite Pearl Street, in which provision was
also to be made for mental cases; but before any patients could be
admitted, an accidental fire, in February, 1775, consumed the interior
of the buildings. Reconstruction was immediately undertaken and
completed early in the spring of 1776. But by that time the
Revolutionary War was in full course, and the buildings were taken over
by the Continental authorities as barracks for troops, and were
surrounded by fortifications. When the British captured the city in
September, 1776, they made the same use of the buildings for their own
troops, who remained there until 1783. A long period of readjustment
then ensued, and it was not until January, 1791, that the Hospital was
at last opened to patients. In September, 1792, the Governors directed
the admission of the first mental case, and for the hundred and
twenty-nine years since that time the Society has continuously devoted a
part of its effort to the care of the mentally diseased. After a few
years a separate building for them was deemed desirable, and was
constructed. The State assisted this expansion of the Hospital by
appropriating to the Society $12,500 a year for fifty years. This new
building housed comfortably seventy-five patients, but ten years later
even this proved inadequate in size and undesirable in surroundings. In
the meanwhile a wave of reform in the care of the insane was rising in
Europe under the influence of such benefactors as Philippe Pinel in
France, and William and Samuel Tuke in England. Thomas Eddy, a
philanthropic Quaker Governor of the Society, who was then its Treasurer
and afterward in succession its Vice-President and President, becoming
aware of this movement, and having made a special study of the care and
cure of mental affections, presented a communication to the Governors in
which he advocated a change in the medical treatment, and in particular
the adoption of the so-called moral management similar to that pursued
by the Tukes at The Retreat, in Yorkshire, England. This memorable
communication was printed by the Governors, and constitutes one of the
first of the systematic attempts made in the United States to put this
important medical subject on a humane and scientific basis. To carry out
his plan, Mr. Eddy urged the purchase of a large tract of land near the
city and the erection of suitable buildings. He ventured the moderate
estimate that the population of the city, then about 110,000, might be
doubled by 1836, and quadrupled by 1856. In fact, it was more than
doubled in those first twenty years, and sextupled in the second
twenty. He was justified, therefore, in believing that the hospital
site on lower Broadway would soon be surrounded by a dense population,
and quite unsuited for the efficient care of mental diseases. The
Governors gave these recommendations immediate and favorable
consideration. Various tracts of land, containing in all about
seventy-seven acres, and lying on the historic Harlem Heights between
what are now Riverside Drive and Columbus Avenue, and 107th and 120th
Streets, were subsequently bought by the Society for about $31,000. To
aid in the construction and maintenance of the necessary hospital
buildings, the Legislature, by an act reciting that there was no other
institution in the State where insane patients could be accommodated,
and that humanity and the interest of the State required that provision
should be made for their care and cure, granted an additional annual
appropriation of $10,000 to the Society from 1816 until 1857. The main
Hospital, built of brownstone, stood where the massive library of
Columbia University now is, and the brick building still standing at the
northeast corner of Broadway and 116th Street was the residence of the
Medical Superintendent. The only access to this site by land was over
what was known as the Bloomingdale Road, running from Broadway and 23d
Street through the Bloomingdale district on the North River to 116th
Street, and from that fact our institution assumed the name of
Bloomingdale Asylum, or, as it is now called, Bloomingdale Hospital.
This beautiful elevated site overlooking the Hudson River and the Harlem
River was admirably fitted for its purpose. The spacious tract of land,
laid out in walks and gardens, an extensive grove of trees, generous
playgrounds and ample greenhouses, combined to give the spot unusual
beauty and efficiency. This notable work finished, the Governors of the
Society issued on May 10, 1821, an "Address to the Public"[1] which
marks so great an advance in psychiatry in our country that it deserves
study. The national character of the institution was indicated in the
opening paragraph, where it announced that the Asylum would be open for
the reception of patients from any part of the United States on the
first of the following June. Accommodation for 200 patients was
provided, and to these new surroundings were removed on that day all the
mental cases then under treatment at the New York Hospital on lower
Broadway.
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