520 EDWARD JARVIS. 



He had from the first been greatly interested iu the treatment of 

 the insane, and shortly after his settlement iu Dorchester he began to 

 receive insane patients in his own house. He was singularly success- 

 ful in this department of his profession, and was so in no small measure 

 by the power of assiduous kindness, in which he was largely aided by 

 his excellent wife. While he was not neglectful of the resources of 

 medical science, or unskilled in their application, he seemed to win his 

 way to the darkened or clouded intellect by pouring through the inter- 

 vening medium the most calorific rays that could issue from hearts 

 glowing with pity and love. His restored patients carried with them 

 through life only happy and grateful memories of their residence with 

 him, and remained ever afterward his warmly attached friends, his 

 welcome visitors, and some of them his habitual correspondents. 



He early commenced the study of statistics with a purely philanthropic 

 purpose. His researches were chiefly confined to subjects bearing on 

 insanity, the conditions and causes of disease, the sources and conse- 

 quences of intemperance, and the mutual relation and interaction of 

 physical and moral causes and effects. It is claimed for him by those 

 who, like him, have made statistics a science, that he had no superior 

 in that department. His aim always was, not to support a foregone 

 conclusion, but to obtain materials for a substantial basis of opinion 

 and action. He was careful on all subjects not limited in their very 

 nature to cover with his figures a sufficiently large space, time, or both, 

 for accidental variations to disappear, and was most solicitous to do 

 this when an exceptional year or district would be peculiarly favor- 

 able to the result that he expected or desired. He prepared in full 

 the report and digest of mortality statistics for the United States census 

 of 18G0, and performed important work also for that of 1870. He was 

 for many years President of the American Statistical Association, and 

 represented it in a general convention of scientific statisticians in 

 London, in 1860. To the close of his life he was in correspondence 

 with statisticians in every European country, and by the exchange of 

 documents he had collected a large and valuable polyglot library of 

 statistical science and literature. 



He became interested at an early period in the Institution for the 

 Blind and in the School for Idiots iu South Boston, took charge of 

 them during the repeated and prolonged absences of Dr. Howe, always 

 devoted to them a large amount of time and labor, and was constantly 

 resorted to by their teachers and care-takers for advice and sympathy. 

 Of the School for Idiots he was for many years, and until his death, 

 the titular Sujierintendent, — a sinecure office so far as sal.ary was con- 



