The record of American psychiatry for the past year is not an eventful one so far as matters of interest to trans-Atlantic readers are concerned. At the beginning of the year the subject of interest was the New York Pathological Institute and the difficulties that involved its management. For a number of months it has been in a state of suspended activity—not dead but sleeping—and now appears to be about to start again on a fresh career of usefulness. A new organisation has been planned, an advisory board appointed, consisting of recognised authorities in their departments, and including representatives of the related specialties of psychology and general biology, as well as those of pathology, neurology, and psychiatry. The gentlemen who have accepted positions on the board are well known, and their interest in the Institute and its aims undoubted. Their names will carry weight; Professor McKeen Cattell holds the chair of psychology in Columbia University, Professors Ewing and Herter represent the two great medical schools of Bellevue and Cornell, Dr. H. A. Hern, of Albany, a well-known neurologist, Dr. Bumpus, of the American Museum of Natural History, Drs. Pilgrim and Macdonald, representing the State Hospitals, and Dr. Frederick Peterson, ex officio, as commissioner of lunacy, complete the board. These gentlemen will exercise a general oversight over the work, and when a new working staff has been appointed, we may look for good work, carried on under more favourable conditions than was formerly the case. It is the intention in their reorganisation not only to carry on original research as in the past, but to utilize the Institute for special instruction of the members of the different asylum staffs in psychiatry and special research work. It will be located in one of the departments of the Manhattan Hospital until such time as a special reception hospital for the insane can be provided.
Engaging the past: mass culture and the production of historical knowledge