Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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{{FAformat
|Title= Middletown State Hospital
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|Title= St Elizabeths Hospital
|Image= Middletown1.jpg
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|Image= St_Elizabeth_SH_Kirkbride.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= This institution was originally founded in pursuance of an act of the legislature passed April 28, 1870, establishing at Middletown, in Orange county, a state lunatic asylum for "the care and treatment of the insane and the inebriate upon the principles of medicine known as homœopathic." The movement, however, which led to the ultimate establishment of the hospital had its inception in the address of John Stanton Gould before the State Homœopathic Medical Society at its session in Albany in February, 1866. The subject of the orator's discourse was "The Relation of Insanity to Bodily Disease," and in the course of his remarks attention was called to the necessity of a new state asylum for lunatic's in the southern tier counties of the state, and claimed as a matter of justice that when organized the institution should be placed under the homœopathic school of medicine.
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|Body= In November of 1852 a tract of land overlooking the Anacostia River was purchased for $25,000 from Thomas Blagden. Construction began almost immediately on the center building, a red brick fortress designed in Gothic revival style by Thomas U. Walter, who also designed the dome of the Capital Building. The hospital was built following the Kirkbride Plan, most of the construction of the center building was done by slaves. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The Hospital's early mission, as defined by its founder, the leading mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeth's, the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located. Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeth's in 1916. By the 1940s, the Hospital complex covering an area of over 300 acres. At its peak, 4,000 people worked and 7,000 patients lived there. It was the first and only federal mental facility with a national scope. The first appropriation towards building the Government Hospital for the Insane was of $100,000, and was made by Congress in 1852 for the purchase of land. The organic act creating the institution and outlining the duties of its officers and providing for the admission of various classes of insane patients was not approved until March 3, 1855. The hospital, however, had been opened for the reception of patients on January 15,1855.  [[St Elizabeths Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
This seems to have been the crystallizing point of the earnest desire of the homœopathic profession throughout the state, for at the next meeting of the state society in February, 1867, a resolution was offered by Dr. Paine of Albany to the effect that "Whereas, a bill authorizing the erection of a new lunatic asylum is now pending before the legislature," therefore a committee should be appointed to prepare a memorial asking "for such action as shall place said institution under the care of the homœopathic school."
 
 
 
But notwithstanding the laudable efforts of the advocates of the enterprise and their apparent zeal for its consummation, nothing was accomplished until some years afterward. In the meantime, however, Dr. Hilon Doty had come forward with a proposition to turn over his private asylum, "Margarettsville Retreat for the Insane," to a board of trustees or managers of an incorporated institution under homœopathic control, and while an act of incorporation was secured in 1869 through the influence of the state medical society, nothing was done until December of that year, when Dr. George E. Foote of Middletown presented to the homœopathic profession a plan to establish an insane asylum, founded by subscription and endowment, and organized as a close corporation.  [[Middletown State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 05:37, 28 June 2020

Featured Article Of The Week

St Elizabeths Hospital


St Elizabeth SH Kirkbride.jpg

In November of 1852 a tract of land overlooking the Anacostia River was purchased for $25,000 from Thomas Blagden. Construction began almost immediately on the center building, a red brick fortress designed in Gothic revival style by Thomas U. Walter, who also designed the dome of the Capital Building. The hospital was built following the Kirkbride Plan, most of the construction of the center building was done by slaves. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The Hospital's early mission, as defined by its founder, the leading mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeth's, the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located. Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeth's in 1916. By the 1940s, the Hospital complex covering an area of over 300 acres. At its peak, 4,000 people worked and 7,000 patients lived there. It was the first and only federal mental facility with a national scope. The first appropriation towards building the Government Hospital for the Insane was of $100,000, and was made by Congress in 1852 for the purchase of land. The organic act creating the institution and outlining the duties of its officers and providing for the admission of various classes of insane patients was not approved until March 3, 1855. The hospital, however, had been opened for the reception of patients on January 15,1855. Click here for more...