ing list of martyrs in the cause of humanity shows. We all have known a sinking of heart at the threat of the paranoiac, especially when at large and full of his imaginary grievances.

Doctor Sawyer was a classmate of mine at Harvard, and went immediately to the Butler Hospital in 1859, on graduation, as an assistant. For nineteen years before his death in 1886, he was superintendent, and carried on the work of Doctor Ray with great "His personal qualities were such as endeared him to all his patients and friends. His manners were gentle and winning, and his character marked by a singular modesty, united with great firmness of purpose.'

success.

His successor, Doctor Goldsmith, died of pneumonia after two years' service at thirty-four. He had previously been superintendent of the Danvers Hospital for five years. His was another of those all too rare characters, singularly fitted for the service in which he engaged. He graduated at Amherst, and took his medical degree in New York. He was an assistant at Bloomingdale, and also with Doctor Clouston at Edinburgh, and Doctor Major of West Riding. In 1883 he passed a second year in Europe, studying with Westphal and Krafft-Ebing, and visiting foreign hospitals.

A small memorial volume is before me with a portrait of Doctor Goldsmith. It is a face full of intellectual beauty, of high character, with an expression serious and gentle, fit exponent of his life. The book contains tributes of respect and affection from Doctors Gorton, Folsom, Nichols, Chapin, Cowles, Hack Tuke, Miss Phelps, and Whittier. Who could wish more appreciative biographers?

"And what more shall I say? for time would fail me to speak of Brown, and Knight, of Booth, and Whittemore, and Shew. They also have obtained a good report." Like St. Paul," They have fought a good fight; they have finished their course; they have kept the faith." The first two were active members for many years, and engaged in a work akin to ours-the care of the feeble-minded. Booth and Whittemore, after serving most faithfully for many years as assistant physicians, each had charge of the McLean Asylum for a year. They were both men of high character and marked ability, and died in middle life in the midst of their usefulness.

He was

Doctor Shew took his medical degree at Jefferson. post-surgeon at Hilton Head during the war. In 1866 he was

chosen superintendent at Middletown, and served twenty years, his death resulting from an accidental fall. He was of a cheerful and hopeful temperament, and of large executive ability. He was a skillful physician, and a sympathetic and appreciative friend, so that many of his patients became greatly attached to him.

Of living New England alienists it is not my province to speak. They are all young men, or of middle age, and belong to the new era of psychiatry. They work under the inspiration and by the light of the new psychology; they are all working to perfect their hospitals, public or private; to build new ones, or to improve their methods of treatment. May it be long before any of them needs a biographer. Outside the hospitals, but interested either in the practical or theoretical side of our specialty, are such men as Hall, Donaldson, Hodge, Bowditch, Councilman, James, Royce, Münsterberg, Folsom, Jelly, Prince, Putnam, and Knapp.

The new school is less absorbed in hospital routine, is broader and more scientific than the old. As proof of this proposition, I would cite the fact that clinical and didactic instruction on insanity are given in all our New England medical colleges, and have been made requisites for graduation at Harvard. Laboratories for experimental psychology have been established at Harvard and Clark Universities. As further evidence, take the four training schools for nurses of the insane, the first established at the McLean Asylum; also the pathological laboratory there, and the work of Doctor Gannett at the Boston Lunatic Hospital. Also the fact that in Massachusetts there are now in process of erection a chronic asylum for the State, a municipal hospital for Boston, and a private hospital for the McLean Asylum. These are all on the segregate plan, and it is believed each will be the best of its kind in this country at least.

Another proof of the scientific spirit is the fact that the Boston Medico-Psychological Society not only includes nearly all the alienists of New England, but all the neurologists as well. It is a large and flourishing society, with monthly meetings for the reading of papers, and subscribes for a long list of special journals in several languages. It also invites distinguished specialists from distant cities to read before it, and to meet the physicians and surgeons connected with our hospitals and colleges socially. The last reader was the superintendent of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, your honored secretary.

The same spirit of progress has happily infected our larger society, once limited to superintendents alone, and naturally most interested in the practical side of hospital management. Now any physician sufficiently qualified and interested may be elected to our number. Any unqualified superintendent may be kept out, being no longer a member ex-officio. Two-thirds of our assistant physicians are already associate members, so that young blood and new ideas ought hereafter to visibly affect our transactions. As we take our new departure, let us lay one wreath of immortelles on the altar of the past.

THE ALIENISTS OF THE PAST HALF-CENTURY.

BY HENRY M. HURD. M. D.,

Baltimore, Md.

A word of explanation is due to the Association for the imperfect and inadequate presentation of this paper. Under the division of subjects for the semi-centennial addresses decided upon by the committee of arrangments it was proposed to ask Dr. Fisher of Boston to treat of the alienists of New England and to leave to Dr. Callender of Nashville the duty of writing of the work done by alienists in other portions of the country. The eminent fitness of Dr. Callender to prepare such an address by reason of personal acquaintance with the majority of those who were to be spoken of was so obvious, it was a matter of sincere and lasting regret that the state of his health finally precluded him from undertaking the task assigned. As the preliminary programme had already been printed before this fact was known, it became impossible to appoint another person at such a late date and the writer as secretary of the committee of arrangements felt morally bound to do what he could to fill the gap in the programme. Hence this brief and imperfect presentation of a most interesting topic.

It is evident in considering the work of alienists outside of New England during the past fifty years that they occupied peculiar and often trying positions. Their work was not generally initiated by medical men nor dictated by scientific zeal. The dependent insane as a rule, then as now were most neglected in those large cities, like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where the flame of scientific medicine seemed to burn the brightest. Outside of New England the movement for the care and treatment of the insane was a philanthropic rather than a professional one and we should do scant justice to the men who promoted it if we measured it alone by the modern standards of scientific neurology and psychiatry. These men were pioneers in a great philanthropic movement which spread through the whole land largely as the result of the work of one disinterested, self-sacrificing woman to relieve the suffering and distress incident to insanity. They moulded public sentiment to found and support institutions for the insane, originated laws, set

in motion the machinery of public aid and built asylums and hospitals to meet crying necessities. With them it was not so much the question of securing the most scientific and approved methods of caring for the insane as of securing any care at all. They were compelled by the hard conditions of pioneer life to be business managers, architects, social reformers, statisticians, and physicians. They organized modes of support, devised systems of sewage disposal and of heating and ventilation, planned buildings, created modes of accounting for receipts and disbursements, grappled with the problems of public relief, initiated systems of industry, trained nurses and attendants and in these and countless other ways stood in the forefront of the battle for the humane care and treatment of a most unfortunate class of citizens. They made mistakes and often lost sight of their functions as medical men in business details, but they labored earnestly, self-sacrificingly and efficiently. The present state of public provision for the insane in the United States to-day attests the earnestness and fidelity of their labors.

A writer in the Journal of Mental Science, once referred disparagingly to the tone of "strained philanthrophy" which pervaded the reports of superintendents of State institutions for the insane in America and it was pardonable for one who was not familiar with the genesis of most of these institutions from a broad philanthropic movement to make this criticism. To disregard it, however, in any estimate of the men who took part in it is to miss the whole spirit of asylum construction and organization during the past halfcentury. The need of provision was so pressing, it appealed to self-sacrificing earnest men everywhere and brought into the service of the public a rare company of men who labored wisely and efficiently for the public good. Their source of power was the confidence which plain people felt in their disinterested devotion to the humane care of the insane. This devotion was not assumed for the purpose of securing support from a grudging and unsympathetic public. They keenly felt the duty of better provision and this conviction pervaded their whole lives. There is danger that the freshness of the original philanthropic impulse will be lost now that institutions are more complete and can be organized on a more scientific basis. The personality of these men was an important factor in their success and their peculiar circumstances and special environment which made them what they were should not be for