A Psychiatric Milestone: Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921
History
A Psychiatric Milestone: Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921
Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane; Mental illness
By creating for this Hospital a liberal foundation, by completing its
equipment so as to make possible a free exchange of patients and of
workers from the Hospital in the city and this place in the country,
much has been done and more will be done to set a living example of the
very spirit of modern psychopathology and psychiatry. We know now that
from 10 to 40 per cent of the patients of the gynecologist, the
gastroenterologist, and the internist generally would be better treated
if a study of the life problems were added to that of the special organs
and functions. To meet this need it should be possible to have enough
workers in this branch of the Hospital to take their share of the
consulting and co-operation work in the wards and dispensary of the
General Hospital, and perhaps even in the schools provided for the same
type of people from which you draw your patients. The grouping of the
patients can be such that the old prejudices need not reach far into the
second century of the life of the Hospital. With a man of the vision and
practical experience of Dr. Russell, there is no need for an outsider to
conjure up a picture of special practical achievements as I have done
of the more general principles to-day.
An institution is more than a human life. Many ambitions combine and
become part of a group spirit permeating the organization and reaching
their fulfilment in the succession of leaders. The life and growth and
happy self-realization of an institution is not the bricks and
mortar--it is a living and elastic entity--never too stable, never too
finished, a growing and plastic plant--to use a metaphor that has
slipped in perhaps without arousing all the implications the term plant
might carry and does carry.
Some years ago my wife celebrated her birthday and told her colored cook
jocosely: "Geneva, I am a hundred years old to-day." The cook's jaw
dropped and then she suddenly remarked: "Lord! you don't look dat ole."
That is the way I feel about Bloomingdale Hospital as we see it to-day
pulsating with ever-fresh life and ever-fresh problems! How different
from a simple human being, after all! The heart and wisdom of many a man
and woman has gone into the perpetuation of what a few thoughtful men
started in 1821 and the result is that it is ever renewing its youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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