treatment he recommended and which was generally employed was copious blood-letting, blisters, purges, emetics, and other severe depleting measures. When Bloomingdale Asylum was established, therefore, the provision for moral treatment did not contemplate that this should be applied by the physician or that he should have full control of the resources by means of which it could be applied. The records do not indicate that either the physicians or the Governors realized that this might be necessary or advantageous. The present system of administration in which the chief physician is also the chief executive officer of the institution was a result of an evolution which took many years to reach its full consummation. Pinel, many years before Bloomingdale Asylum was opened, had shown by the most careful observation and practice that the management and discipline of the hospital was a most powerful agent in the treatment of the patients. The manner in which he was led to this conclusion is a remarkable example of the scientific method. When he became physician to the Bicetre he found that the methods of classification and treatment recommended in the books seemed to be inadequate, and, desiring further information, he says: "I resolved to examine myself the facts which were presented to my attention; and, forgetting the empty honor of my titular distinction as a physician, I viewed the scene that opened to me with the eye of common sense and unprejudiced observation.... From systems of nosology, I had little assistance to expect; since the arbitrary distributions of Sauvages and Cullen were better calculated to impress the conviction of their insufficiency than to simplify my labor. I, therefore, resolved to adopt that method of investigation 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