Revolutionary War was in full course, and the buildings were taken over
by the Continental authorities as barracks for troops, and were
surrounded by fortifications. When the British captured the city in
September, 1776, they made the same use of the buildings for their own
troops, who remained there until 1783. A long period of readjustment
then ensued, and it was not until January, 1791, that the Hospital was
at last opened to patients. In September, 1792, the Governors directed
the admission of the first mental case, and for the hundred and
twenty-nine years since that time the Society has continuously devoted a
part of its effort to the care of the mentally diseased. After a few
years a separate building for them was deemed desirable, and was
constructed. The State assisted this expansion of the Hospital by
appropriating to the Society $12,500 a year for fifty years. This new
building housed comfortably seventy-five patients, but ten years later
even this proved inadequate in size and undesirable in surroundings. In
the meanwhile a wave of reform in the care of the insane was rising in
Europe under the influence of such benefactors as Philippe Pinel in
France, and William and Samuel Tuke in England. Thomas Eddy, a
philanthropic Quaker Governor of the Society, who was then its Treasurer
and afterward in succession its Vice-President and President, becoming
aware of this movement, and having made a special study of the care and
cure of mental affections, presented a communication to the Governors in
which he advocated a change in the medical treatment, and in particular
the adoption of the so-called moral management similar to that pursued
by the Tukes at The Retreat, in Yorkshire, England. This memorable
communication was printed by the Governors, and constitutes one of the
first of the systematic attempts made in the United States to put this
important medical subject on a humane and scientific basis. To carry out
his plan, Mr. Eddy urged the purchase of a large tract of land near the
city and the erection of suitable buildings. He ventured the moderate