6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



sary to an adequate provision for so much suffering. To advance this 

 object in question, Dr. Bell was elected a member of the Legislature ; 

 and no one contributed more largely than he, by his infiuence among 

 the members and by his writings in the public journals, to insure the 

 success of the enterprise. 



While engaged in this important public service, and probably in no 

 small degree in consequence of it, he was invited to take charge of the 

 McLean Asylum. This appointment was highly honorable to him, as 

 it was wholly unexpected and unsolicited on his part. He entered 

 upon the duties of his new office early in the year 1837, and continued 

 to perform them with unsurpassed zeal and fidelity for a period of 

 nearly twenty years. There is but little in the routine life at such an 

 institution which can properly be brought before the public, and yet 

 there are but few positions where the responsibility to the public is 

 more serious, or of a more delicate nature. The complicated details of 

 the management of the internal affairs of an asylum for the insane, the 

 demands, sometimes conflicting and often unreasonable, of those interest- 

 ed in its inmates, call for very varied and efficient executive abilities, 

 and these he possessed in an eminent degree. Endowed with a mind 

 naturally shrewd and observing, with wide interests and attainments 

 in science and literature, an extensive knowledge of men and things, 

 quiet and unostentatious, but at the same time frank, genial, and 

 attractive, he commanded the respect and confidence of all who came in 

 contact with him. That his administration of the affairs of the McLean 

 Asylum were wholly successful is proved by the fact that, while under 

 his charge, its means for usefulness were greatly increased, it attained to 

 higher confidence in the community, and steadily advanced in reputation 

 as the best-organized charity of its kind in the country. His published 

 reports give abundant evidence of the success of his treatment, of the 

 justice and truthfulness of his character, and of his intolerance of any- 

 thing like exaggeration in presenting the results of his labors to the 

 public. 



While his life at the Asylum was necessarily one of comparative 

 seclusion, he was ever ready and willing to aid in the establishment 

 and further the objects of other institutions for the treatment of the 

 insane. In 1845 he was commissioned by the trustees of the Butler 

 Hospital for the Insane, in Rhode Island, to visit Europe to collect 

 information, and to report upon the best plans for the construction, 

 warming, ventilation, and internal economy of the newer and better- 



