SURGEON-IN-CHIEF TO THE STATE IMMIGRANTS' HOSPITAL, 1850 TO 1873, 1880 To 1883- OF NEW YORK AND ONE OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK-MEMBER OF THE MEDICO-LEGAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, ETC., ETC. RE-PRINT FROM MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL. NEW YORK: J. H. VAIL & CO. 1884. PREFATORY NOTE. With the great and rapid increasing immigration into the United States from 1840 to 1847, it became necessary to take some action in order to provide for the care and relief of immigrants who might most require aid and protection, and to adopt some measures from motives of State economy. The number of immigrants suffering from disease and accident increased beyond the proportion of the increase of immigration. To remedy the evils, urgent at the time, the Legislature of the State of New York appointed a Permanent Commission for the Relief and Protection of Aliens arriving at the Port of New York, the expense to be defrayed by a small commutation payment, from each immigrant. Under the auspices of this Commission, the Honorable Julian C. Verplanck acting as President, the foundation of the large Hospital and Refuge establishment was laid for the benefit of the immigrant, on a healthy island contiguous to 110th street, in the 12th Ward of the city. Soon after the construction of these Institutions, without change of residence, I was placed at the head of the Surgical Department, with continuous service, and a sufficient number of competent assistants. The Hospital consisted of Departments embracing General and Special Surgery, Medicine and Obstetrics. To these was added a Department for Lunatics, on account of the increase of insanity among the immigrant population, scattered through differents parts of the country. Acting in concert with the Resident Physician-in-Chief, the late Dr. George Ford, there being no special Alienist attached to the Institution, I had ample means afforded for observing and studying the characteristics and abnormal conditions of the insane. From the opportunities thus presented, and from observations derived from cases necessarily occurring in the current of private practice, I became satisfied that insanity is a morbid condition of the mind, resulting directly or indirectly from disease of a part or of the whole of the Brain, or from imperfect development, and that it is not a disease of the mind, per se, independent of functional or structural change. This view of the pathological source of Insanity bears directly upon the Medico-Legal aspect of the subject, and at the suggestion of the Society, I have, amidst a press of professional business, drawn up the following paper. 14 EAST 16TH STREET, |