Appendix I

COMMUNICATIONS FROM DR. BEDFORD PIERCE, MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT OF THE RETREAT, YORK, ENGLAND

May 5th, 1921.

DEAR DR. RUSSELL:

I have read with much pleasure your pamphlet giving the history of Bloomingdale Hospital. The reproduction in facsimile of Thomas Eddy's communication is especially interesting and it will be placed with the records of the early days of the Retreat.

We have looked through the Minutes, which are complete from the opening of the Retreat in 1796, and also examined a large number of original letters of William and Samuel Tuke respecting the Institution, but have not succeeded in tracing the letter from S. Tuke to William Eddy, to which you refer. As you are probably aware, S. Tuke was the grandson of William Tuke, the founder, and when he published the History of the Retreat in 1812 he was but twenty-eight years of age. This book had a far-reaching influence on the treatment of the insane, and it is remarkable that a man untrained in medicine and without university education should have been able to write it. The book is now very rare, but as we have three duplicate copies, I am authorized by the Directors of the Retreat to present your Hospital with one of them. I have already sent you a copy of an address of my own dealing with Psychiatry in England at about the time your Hospital was instituted.

The use of the term "moral treatment" as opposed to treatment of physical disease has in recent years become especially interesting. It is clear that Tuke and Pinel foresaw that psychotherapeutic treatment is necessary, and their efforts were directed towards providing effective "sublimation" of misdirected psychical energy.

One is pleased to see in your report the extent to which organized occupations are developed at Bloomingdale--a pleasure not unmixed with envy at seeing the picture of the men's occupational pavilion, and the prospective erection of a similar building for women.

In the early days of the Retreat large numbers of visitors came from all parts of the world. There is a gap in the Visitors' Book between 1800-1815, and the list of visitors is not complete.

We have copied out the names of the American Visitors, together with an entry by John W. Francis, M.D., in 1815. It is interesting to note that an American woman Friend, Hannah Field, was accompanied to the Retreat by Elizabeth Fry. In 1818 a party of North American Indians visited the Retreat and signed the Visitors' Book with pictorial representations of their names. These we have had photographed and I send the prints herewith.

May I congratulate you on the centenary of your Hospital and also congratulate you and the Governors on its remarkable development and progress. Here at the Retreat we carry on using the original buildings still, striving to give our patients modern treatment in premises now almost ancient, but which do not appear so out of date in this City of York. York congratulates New York upon its wonderful prosperity, and we gladly recognize its development in the practice of psychiatry fully corresponds with its development in other directions.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

BEDFORD PIERCE.

EXTRACT FROM MINUTES OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE RETREAT

The Retreat, York

Meeting of Directors held on April the 30th, 1921

Copy of Minute No. 8

At this Meeting of the Directors and Agents of York Retreat we hear with pleasure that the Bloomingdale Hospital, the section of the Society of the New York Hospital devoted to the Treatment of Mental Diseases, is to celebrate next month the centenary of its foundation. The facsimile reproduction of the letter of Thomas Eddy which has been presented to the Retreat Library is specially interesting to us as it acknowledges the pioneer work at the Retreat and specially refers to correspondence with Samuel Tuke. We have pleasure in sending to the Governors of the Bloomingdale Hospital a copy of Samuel Tuke's classical work "The Description of the Retreat" in the belief that the principles therein set forth are of lasting importance. We send our hearty congratulations to the Bloomingdale Hospital on its century of good work and wish it every success in the future.

Signed,

CHARLES WEOMANS, Chairman.

OSCAR F. RUMLEN, Treasurer.

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TRANSCRIPT FROM THE VISITORS BOOK OF THE RETREAT

EARLY AMERICAN VISITORS

1803. 3 mon 11th. Abrm. Barker, New Bedford, Massachusits, a young man (a Friend) on a tour; has been in Russia, Denmark, Sweden & Holland. (In William Tuke's writing)

1815. Nov. 30. John W. Francis, M.D. of N. York. J.W. Francis is not wholly ignorant of the State of the Lunatic Asylums in North America, and he has visited almost all the institutions for the Insane that are established in England. He now embraces this opportunity of stating that after an examination of the Retreat for some hours, he should do injustice to his feelings were he not to declare that this establishment far surpasses anything of the kind he has elsewhere seen, and that it reflects equal credit on the wisdom and humanity of its conductors.

Perhaps it is no inconsiderable honour to add that institutions of a similar nature and on the same plan are organizing in different parts of the United States. The New World cannot do better than imitate the old so far as concerns the management of those who labour under mental infirmities. J.W.F.

1816. 1 Mon 4. Sharon Carter, Philadelphia.

1816. 1 mon. Wm. S. Warder, from Philadelphia.

1816. 2 mon 21. Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, who visits Europe for the purpose of qualifying himself to superintend an Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, proposed to be established in Hartford, Connecticut, of the United States of America.

1816. 4 mon 8th. Archibald Gracie, Junr., New York.

1816. April 29th. George F. Randolph, Philadelphia. John Hastings, Baltimore.

1816. 6 mon 19th. Charles Longstreth, from Philadelphia.

1816. 6 mon 19th. Jacob Smedley, from Philadelphia.

1817. 7 mon. Henry Kollock, of Savannah, Georgia. Dr. Wm. Parker, Savannah. G.C. Versslanchi, of New York.

1817. 11/24. Hannah Field, North America, with Elizabeth Fry.

1817. 12 Mo. G.J. Browne, United States of America (Cincinnati).

In 1815 Thomas Eddy, one of the Governors of the Society of the New York Hospital, presented a communication in which he advocated the establishment in the country of a branch for the moral treatment of the insane. This led to the establishment of Bloomingdale Asylum.]

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