PREFACE


The opening of Bloomingdale Asylum on June 1, 1821, was an important
event in the treatment of mental disorders and in the progress of
humanitarian and scientific work in America. Hospital treatment for
persons suffering from mental disorders had been furnished by the New
York Hospital since its opening in 1792, and the Governors had given
much thought and effort to securing the facilities needed. The treatment
consisted, however, principally in the administration of drugs and the
employment of such other physical measures as were in vogue at that
time. Little attempt was made to study the minds of the patients or to
treat them by measures directed specifically to influencing their
thoughts, feelings, and behavior, and what treatment of this character
there was had for its object little more than the repression of
excitement and disordered activity. The value and importance of
treatment directed to the mind had, indeed, been long recognized, but in
practice it had been subordinated to treatment of the actual and assumed
physical disorders to which the mental state of the patient was
attributed, and, in the few hospitals where persons suffering from
mental disorders were received, means for its application were almost or
quite entirely lacking. The establishment of Bloomingdale Asylum for the
purpose of ascertaining to what extent the recovery of the patients
might be accomplished by moral as well as by purely medical treatment
marked, therefore, the very earliest stages of the development in
America of the system of study and treatment of mental disorders which
with increasing amplification and precision is now universally employed.