392 
WILLIAM WHITNEY GODDING. 
he resigned his position and entered upon the practice of 
medicine in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. This was the only 
break in his long career as a psychiatrist. At the end of a 
year he was offered by the late Dr. Charles H. Nichols, then 
superintendent of St. Elizabeth, the Government Hospital 
for the Insane, the position of second assistant physician in 
that institution. He came to Washington in September, 
1863, and in the following seven years he established a high 
reputation for indefatigable industry and for skillful and 
tender care of the hapless beings under his charge. So well 
had he become known that in 1870 he was appointed super¬ 
intendent of the State Hospital for the Insane at Taunton, 
Massachusetts. He remained there seven years, and Dr. 
Crayke Simpson, who has written a most loving and grace¬ 
ful tribute to his deceased friend, and to whose memoir I am 
indebted for much of the foregoing details, says that Dr. 
Godding always looked back upon that period as the hap¬ 
piest years of his life. He was in his native State, for which 
he entertained a most loyal affection, and he felt the satis¬ 
faction which an able man experiences in the consciousness 
of thorough discharge of his duties. In 1877 Dr. Nichols 
resigned his position as superintendent of St. Elizabeth in 
order to accept the superintendency of the Bloomingdale 
Asylum in New York city. He recommended to the Board 
of Visitors and the Secretary of the Interior the appointment 
of Dr. Godding as his successor. 
Dr. Godding assumed the office in September, 1877, and 
remained in it until his death. The work which he achieved 
in those twenty-two years can only be briefly alluded to in 
this sketch, but it may be justly characterized as immense. 
His high character, his earnestness, and his genial manner 
soon acquired for him the confidence of men in official sta¬ 
tion. As a result, he succeeded in obtaining liberal appro¬ 
priations of money from the Congress, with which substantial 
buildings were erected, and the grounds were laid out in a 
tasteful manner for the comfort and enjoyment of the patients- 
It is to be remembered that not only the insane from the Dis- 
