A Psychiatric Milestone | Page 5

adopted in December, 1891, construction
was begun May 1, 1892, and two years later, under the direction of our
Medical Superintendent, Dr. Samuel B. Lyon, all the patients were
moved from the old to this new Bloomingdale. The cost of the new
buildings was about $1,500,000. From time to time the original
Bloomingdale site was sold and now supplies room, among other
structures, for Columbia University, Barnard College, the Cathedral of
St. John the Divine, St. Luke's Hospital, the Woman's Hospital, and the
National Academy of Design. With the proceeds of those sales of the
old Bloomingdale, not only was the cost of the new Bloomingdale met,
but the permanent endowment of the Society was substantially
increased, and Thomas Eddy was proved to have been both a wise
humanitarian and a far-sighted steward of charitable funds.
In their "Address to the Public" to which I have referred, issued when

Bloomingdale Hospital was opened in 1821, the Governors of the
Society spoke of the new conception of moral treatment of the mentally
afflicted which had been established in several European hospitals and
which was supplanting the harsh and cruel usage of former days, as
"one of the noblest triumphs of pure and enlightened benevolence." In
that same spirit those founders dedicated themselves to the conduct of
this institution. Their devotion to the work was impressive. Looking
back on those early days we see a constant personal attention to the
details of institutional life that commands admiration. The standards
then set have become a tradition that has been preserved unbroken for a
hundred years. Humane methods of care, the progressively best that
medical science can devise, the utilization of a growingly productive
pursuit of research, have consistently marked the administration of this
great trust. The Governors of to-day are as determined as any of their
predecessors to maintain that ideal of "pure and enlightened
benevolence." New paths are opening and larger resources are
becoming available. Under the guidance of our distinguished Medical
Superintendent, with his able and devoted staff of physicians, a broader
and more intensive development is already under way. Animated by
that resolve and cheered by that prospect, we may thus confidently
hope, as we begin the second century of Bloomingdale's career, for
results not less fruitful and gratifying than those which we celebrate
to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Address of the Governors of the New York Hospital, to
the Public, relative to the Asylum for the Insane at Bloomingdale, New
York, May 10th, 1821. Reprinted by Bloomingdale Hospital Press,
White Plains, May 26, 1921. See Appendix V, p. 212.]

ADDRESS BY DR. ADOLF MEYER
_The Chairman_: In celebrating our centenary we are naturally dealing
also with the larger subject of general psychiatry. Our success in this
discussion should be materially promoted by the presence with us of Dr.
Adolf Meyer, Professor of Psychiatry in the Medical School of Johns
Hopkins University, and Director of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, of
Baltimore. Before taking up this important work in that famous medical
centre, Dr. Meyer was actively engaged for several years in

psychopathic work in New York. He will speak to us on "THE
CONTRIBUTIONS OF PSYCHIATRY TO THE UNDERSTANDING
OF LIFE PROBLEMS."
DR. MEYER
When Dr. Russell honored me with the invitation to speak at this
centenary celebration of the renowned Bloomingdale Hospital, my
immediate impulse was to choose as my topic a phase of psychiatric
development to which this Hospital has especially contributed through
our greatly missed August Hoch and his deeply appreciated coworker
Amsden. I have in mind the great gain in concreteness of the
physician's work with mind and the resulting contribution of psychiatry
to a better knowledge of human life and its problems. The great gain
this passing century is able to hand on to its successor is the clearer
recognition of just what the psychiatrist actually works with and works
on.
Of all the divisions of medicine, psychiatry has suffered longest from
man's groping for a conception of his own nature. Psychiatry means,
literally, the healing of souls. What then do we actually mean by soul
or by psyche? This question has too long been treated as a disturbing
puzzle.
To-day we feel that modern psychiatry has found itself--through the
discovery that, after all, the uncritical common-sense view of mind and
soul is not so far remote from a critical common-sense view of the
individual and its life activity, freed from the forbidding and confusing
assumptions through which the concept of mind and soul has been held
in bewildering awe.
Strange to say, good old Aristotle was nearer an understanding than
most of the wise men and women that have succeeded him for these
more than two thousand years. He saw in the psyche what he called the
form and realization or fulfilment of the human organism;