762 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 



importance to have the system adopted by the State Board, its value 

 recognized, and its work established on a larger scale. 



Besides serving, on the State Board Dr. Folsom gave much time 

 during the early eighties to the Danvers Lunatic Hospital, in the es- 

 tablishment of which he had been greatly interested and of which he 

 had been made trustee. In 1881 he read an excellent paper entitled 

 'The Management of the Insane," before the Hospital Trustees As- 

 sociation, discussing and forecasting the conditions needed to make a 

 hospital fulfil its possibilities of efficiency. As usual, practical good 

 sense, thorough information and earnest desire for reform inspire its 

 pages, on one of which he refers to his studies made during five visits in 

 different years to' Great Britain. Another paper, on "The Relation of 

 the State to the Insane," was read at the American Medical Associa- 

 tion this same year. 



In the following year, 1882, occurred the trial of Guiteau for the 

 assassination of President Garfield, followed by his condemnation and 

 execution, notwithstanding the protest of a large number of the best 

 physicians of the country. Dr. Folsom took part in the public dis- 

 cussion of the merits of this case, and in so doing revived an interest 

 in medical jurisprudence which had expressed itself, even in 1875, in 

 a paper entitled "Limited Responsibility: a Discussion of the Pome- 

 roy Case," in 1877 by an article on "Medical Jurisprudence in New 

 York," and in 1880 by an account of "Cases of Insanity and of Fa- 

 naticism," devoted mainly to the remarkably interesting case of Free- 

 man, the religious fanatic of the quiet village of Pocasset on Cape Cod 

 who had killed a favorite child under a supposed Divine command. 

 The study of such borderland cases, involving questions of moral and 

 of legal responsibility, continued, indeed, to interest him throughout 

 his life, and it is well known to his friends that he analyzed with 

 extreme care, through several years, the data in the noted case of 

 Jane Toppan. Pomeroy and Jane Toppan he believed to be essen- 

 tially criminals, Guiteau insane. Freeman he rightly judged a crank 

 of the fanatic type, a product of his environment, and only technically 

 insane. He kept close watch of Freeman from the beginning onward, 

 was instrumental in securing his release on probation from the asylum 

 in which he was confined, and rejoiced at the continued reports of his 

 subsequent good behavior, which have continued to come in even 

 to the present day. 



In 1881 Dr. Folsom was appointed physician to out-patients at the 

 Boston City Hospital, and in 18S6 he took charge, as visiting physician, 

 of the ward for nervous and renal diseases, which had been established 

 in 1877 at the request of Dr. R. T. Edes, and of which Dr. Edes 



