42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Turning now to our own country we find the care of the insane in 

 the American colonies prior to the Revolution to differ in no way from 

 the treatment during the same period in Europe. In the Old Colony 

 Laws of Plymouth (1660) provision was made that persons who com- 

 mit suicide "shall be denied the privilege of being buried in the 

 common burying place of Christians, but shall be buried in some com- 

 mon highway, where the selectmen of the town where such persons did 

 inhabit, shall appoint, and a cartload of stones laid upon the grave, as 

 a brand of infamy, and as a warning to others to aware of the like 

 damnable practice." In jails, almshouses and the outhouses of private 

 dwellings, the insane were kept, often in chains and in filth, and 

 deprived of light and proper warmth. No attempt was made toward 

 special provision for them until 1745, when an asylum was erected 

 in New York City, on the spot where the City Hall now stands, for 

 the reception of the 'indigent poor, the sick, the orphan, the maniac 

 and the refractory.' But the first institution in America for the 

 remedial treatment of the insane was founded in 1751 in connection 

 with the Pennsylvania Hospital. Being opened 1752, "it was," says 

 Kirkbride, "for a long period of years far in advance of all other 

 receptacles for the insane in the United States, and, having the advan- 

 tage of physicians like Bond, Shippen, Push, Wister, Physick and 

 others of equal ability, its wards were constantly filled, and its advan- 

 tages eagerly sought by patients from the most distant parts of the 

 Union." 



It is noteworthy that, besides Dr. Thomas Bond, of Philadelphia, 

 and Benjamin Franklin, the Society of Friends was active in the 

 inception of this hospital, a society later to be influential in the estab- 

 lishment of the York Retreat in England and the Friends Asylum at 

 Frankfort, Pa. (1813), showing in these early times a more enlight- 

 ened philanthropy than any other religious body and giving the im- 

 petus to a movement which in the early years of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury was to effect a revolution in the treatment of the insane. 



The first governmental institution in America was erected by 

 the province of Virginia at Williamsburgh in 1773 ; but it was not until 

 the era of peace and quietude following the wars of the Revolution 

 and of 1812, and after the successful inauguration of the state gov- 

 ernments that public sentiment became thoroughly aroused to the 

 necessity of better care for these unfortunates, and state institutions 

 sprang into existence. During the thirty years following the war of 

 J.812 twenty-three public and private asylums were opened in the 

 United States. 



The treatment at this time was largely influenced by the writing 

 of Dr. Benjamin Rush, a man of great intelligence and benevolence 

 whose 'Observations on Diseases of the Mind' (1812) contained much of 



