y 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 that
in the beginning, the Governors of the Hospital looked upon the moral
treatment of the patients, which was the object for which the
institution was established, as the task of the Physicians. The aim was
to furnish employment, diversion, discipline, and social enjoyment,
without much attempt at precision or close medical direction and
control. For a time the results were considered to be satisfactory. In
1824, however, a joint Committee of the Board reported that they were
impressed by the necessity of improving the moral treatment, and
recommended that two discreet persons be appointed to take charge of
such of the patients as might from time to time be in a condition to be
amuse