which has invariably succeeded in all the departments of natural history, viz., to notice successively every fact, without any other object than that of collecting materials for future use; and to endeavor, as far as possible, to divest myself of the influence, both of my own prepossessions and the authority of others.  With this view, I first of all took a general statement of the symptoms of my patients.  To ascertain their characteristic peculiarities, the above survey was followed by cautious and repeated examinations into the condition of individuals.  All our new cases were entered at great length upon the journals of the house.”  Having thus studied carefully the course of the disease in a number of patients who were subjected only to the guidance and control made possible by the management of the hospital under the direction of a remarkably highly qualified Governor, it came to him with the force of a new discovery that this man who was not a physician was doing more for the patients than he was, and that insanity was curable in many instances by mildness of treatment and attention to the state of mind exclusively.  “I saw with wonder,” he says, “the resources of nature when left to herself, or skilfully assisted in her efforts.  My faith in pharmaceutic preparations was gradually lessened, and my scepticism went at length so far as to induce me never to have recourse to them, until moral remedies had completely failed.”  So convinced did he become of the significance and importance of the management and discipline of the hospital in the treatment of the patients, that, when a few years later, he wrote his “Treatise on Insanity,” he states that one of the objects of his writing it was, “to furnish precise rules for the internal police and management of charitable establishments and asylums; to urge the necessity of providing for the insulation of the different classes of patients at houses intended for their confinement; and to place first, in point of consequence, the duties of a humane and enlightened superintendency and the maintenance of order in the services of the Hospitals.”

Pinel’s views had apparently not been fully understood or adopted by the physicians of America at the time Bloomingdale Asylum was planned and established.  Dr. Rush did not mention him in his book, and Mr. Eddy, in his communication to the Governors of the New York Hospital, referred only to the writings of Drs. Creighton, Arnold, and Rush and the Account of the York Retreat by Samuel Tuke.

When Bloomingdale Asylum was opened, the form of organization introduced was that under which the department at the New York Hospital had been conducted.  Mr. Laban Gardner was made Superintendent or Warden with two men and three women keepers to aid him in the control and management of the seventy-five patients.  There was an Attending Physician who visited once a week and a Resident Physician, neither of whom received salaries.  There is nothing in the records to indicate