OBITUARY NOTICES. 
477 
CHARLES HENRY NICHOLS. 
[Read before the Society, October 15, 1892.] 
Charles Henry Nichols, M. D., superintendent of Bloom- 
ingdale Asylum for the Insane, died at his residence, within 
the grounds of that institution, in the city of New York, 
December 16, 1889. He was the son of Caleb and Eunice 
(Kelly) Nichols, of Vassalborough, Kennebec county, Maine, 
where he was born October 19, 1820. Both parents were of 
old New England stock and were prominent members of the 
Society of Friends. 
Charles, as he was usually called in his youth, was edu¬ 
cated at the public schools of his native town and at an 
academy, conducted by Friends, in Providence, Rhode Island. 
From his youth he possessed marked individuality of char¬ 
acter, was robust, resolute, and persevering. At the age of 
seventeen he began to teach school and continued teaching 
part of each year until he attained his majority, earning in 
this way the means to secure a higher education and a pro¬ 
fessional training. 
After considering as maturely as he could the important 
question of selecting a vocation or profession, he found him¬ 
self attached to medicine and made that his choice. The 
choice once made, he turned his attention earnestly to this 
study. He attended a course of medical lectures at the Uni¬ 
versity of New York and a second course at the University of 
Pennsylvania, where he graduated as M. D. in 1843. On leav¬ 
ing college he began the practice of his profession in Lynn, 
Massachusetts. Here he met with encouraging success, but 
having an earl} 7 leaning toward a study of diseases of the 
brain, he in 1847 became connected as an assistant physi¬ 
cian to the eminent alienist, Dr. Amariah Brigham, in the 
New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. His associations 
with the staff of this hospital and studies pursued under Dr. 
Brigham made him a devoted student of mental disorders. 
He at the same time became greatly interested in the archi- 
