its Vice-President and President, becoming
aware of this movement, and having made a special study of the care and
cure of mental affections, presented a communication to the Governors in
which he advocated a change in the medical treatment, and in particular
the adoption of the so-called moral management similar to that pursued
by the Tukes at The Retreat, in Yorkshire, England. This memorable
communication was printed by the Governors, and constitutes one of the
first of the systematic attempts made in the United States to put this
important medical subject on a humane and scientific basis. To carry out
his plan, Mr. Eddy urged the purchase of a large tract of land near the
city and the erection of suitable buildings. He ventured the moderate
estimate that the population of the city, then about 110,000, might be
doubled by 1836, and quadrupled by 1856. In fact, it was more than
doubled in those first twenty years, and sextupled in the second
twenty. He was justified, therefore, in believing that the hospital
site on lower Broadway would soon be surrounded by a dense population,
and quite unsuited for the efficient care of mental diseases. The
Governors gave these recommendations immediate and favorable
consideration. Various tracts of land, containing in all about
seventy-seven acres, and lying on the historic Harlem Heights between
what are now Riverside Drive and Columbus Avenue, and 107th and 120th
Streets, were subsequently bought by the Society for about $31,000. To
aid in the construction and maintenance of the necessary hospital
buildings, the Legislature, by an act reciting that there was no other
institution in the State where insane patients could be accommodated,
and that humanity and the interest of the State required that provision
should be made for their care and cure, granted an additional annual
appropriation of $10,000 to the Society from 1816 until 1857. The main
Hospital, built of brownstone, stood where the massive library of
Columbia University now is, and the brick building still standing at the
northeast corner of Broadway and 116th Street was the residence of the
Medical Superintendent. The only access to this site by land was over
what was known as the Bloomingdale Road, running from Broadway and 23d
Street through the Bloomingdale district on the North River to 116th
Street, and from that fact our institution assumed the name of
Bloomingdale Asylum, or, as it is now called, Bloomingdale Hospit