OBITUARY NOTICES. 
483 
But while a great change has been wrought by his genius 
upon the beautiful heights overlooking the city of Wash¬ 
ington, Doctor Nichols had himself grown almost uncon¬ 
sciously a quarter of a century older than when he selected 
the site for this noble institution. 
Something of Doctor Nichols’s capacity to transact busi¬ 
ness and his untiring energy may be inferred by a brief 
reference to the many duties he assumed or permitted him¬ 
self to be drawn into outside of his regular hospital work, 
which was of itself sufficient to tax the energy of any ordi¬ 
nary man. During the war he was assistant surgeon to a 
hospital for volunteer soldiers, organized upon the grounds 
of “ St. Elizabeth.” He was at the same time and for years a 
member of the old levy court; one of the school commis¬ 
sioners for the county; a member of the board of police 
commissioners of the District of Columbia; a trustee and 
one of the executive committee of the Columbian University, 
District of Columbia; a member of the board of trustees of 
the Columbian hospital for women and lying-in asylum; a 
member of the Washington National Monument Society, 
and a life member and director in the American Coloniza¬ 
tion Society. He was well informed on almost every subject 
and fitted to take a prominent, if not a leading, part in any 
organization in which he was interested. 
Doctor Nichols on resuming the duties as executive head 
in the affairs at Bloomingdale, in addition to his routine 
hospital duty, revised and greatly improved the methods 
and forms of keeping the histories and records of patients. 
He at the same time superintended the erection of a large 
wing, which quite doubled the capacity of the former build¬ 
ing. He had for some years, at the request of the governors ? 
been maturing plans for the erection of an entire new hos¬ 
pital, to be located on a farm owned by the society of the 
New York hospital at White Plains. The architecture, the 
material for construction, the size of wards, rooms, and cor¬ 
ridors, and the arrangements for lighting, heating, ventilat¬ 
ing, plumbing, as well as the sewerage of the institution, 
were to receive special consideration. 
