Disease of the mind : Notes on the early management, European and American progress, modern methods, etc. in the treatment of insanity, with especial reference to the needs of Massachusetts and the United States / by Charles F. Folsom.

Charles Follen Folsom

Date:: 1877

Credit: Disease of the mind : Notes on the early management, European and American progress, modern methods, etc. in the treatment of insanity, with especial reference to the needs of Massachusetts and the United States / by Charles F. Folsom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$cuffs, shackles, strait-jackets,* etc., the word comfort in the Act could not have been used in its ordinary sense. There was no medical care until 1844, when a physician was appointed superintendent. Virginia with its second asylum, and North Carolina with its first, followed in 1828. In 1830, Massachusetts founded the Worcester Asylum for the safe-keeping of lunatics and those furiously mad in the words of the Eesolve of the Legislature, at last accepting the noble words of one of her most far-sighted legislators, the late Horace Maun, that the insane are the wards of the State, a principle which has become that on which all civilized nations now attempt to act. The hospital was open for patients in 1833. The other States of this country followed: Vermont in 1836 ; Ohio in 1838 ; Maine in 1840; the first state asylum in Pennsylvania in 1841; New Hampshire, Georgia, and the State Asylum in Maryland in 1842; the first public asylum in New York in 1843 ; Rhode Island in 1845 ; Indiana in 1847 ; New Jersey, Louisiana and Illinois in 1848 ; Tennessee in 184'J ; Missouri in 1851; California in 1853 ; Mississippi in 1855 ; North Carolina in 1856 ; District of Columbia in 1858 ; Michigan in 1859; Wisconsin in 1860; Alabama, Iowa and Texas in 1861; the first state asylum in Connecticut in 1864 \\ Kansas in 1866 ; West Virginia in 1867 ; Minnesota in ]870 ; Nebraska in 1871; and Oregon a few years later. The first asylum for the former slaves of our Southern States was established out of an impoverished treasury by Virginia, in 1870, using a hospital formerly occupied by the Freedmeu's Bureau. It will be remembered that Virginia was the first of our States to build a public insane asylum. At the present time we have (1876) sixty-eight public asylums, accommodating, including those not yet occupied, about 30,000 patients. Dr. Conrad gives a list of nineteen private and corporate hospitals (not including those which are quite small), with a capacity for about 2,600 patients. This number, 32,600, is probably from one-half to three-fifths of our total number. There are probably considerably less than * Insanity in Kentucky, by Edward Jarvis, M. D.; Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 18-11, p. 16u. t Previously, the state patients were at the Retreat at Hartford.$