Dr. Kirkbride and His Mental Hospital (review)

BOOK REVIEWS41 in his title claims. By his success the Quaker capital of Philadelphia escaped being included in Roman Catholic Maryland. "I find this place necessary to my Province and yt ye Presence of ye Lord Bait, was agt Law and common. I endeavoured to gett it, and have it, and will keep it if I can" asserted the resolute Penn. PhiladelphiaHorace M. Lippincott Dr. Kirkbride and His Mental Hospital, by Earl D. Bond. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1947. 163 pp. $3.50. IREMEMBER distinctly that, as a young man getting my first acquaintance with the Pennsylvania Hospital in West Philadelphia through knowledge of a patient there, I asked why it was always called Kirkbride 's. The explanation which fired my imagination is effectively amplified in this book. It makes for happiness and a more effective life when a man can earn his living at work which in itself brings satisfaction and seems worth doing. Here is an outstanding example of one who had a profession and found it a satisfying though constantly challenging vocation. Thomas Story Kirkbride was born in Bucks County into a family of Quaker farmers who could give him a good start in life. After his preparatory education he chose to study medicine, first by an apprenticeship in Trenton, then by attending the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. A year as the first house doctor in the Friends Hospital at Frankford started his interest in mental disease. A term at the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce and his early years of general practice in Philadelphia almost made a surgeon of him. When the Pennsylvania Hospital moved its department for the insane from 8th and Spruce to a farm in the country across the Schuylkill, it was not hard to persuade him to become its Medical Director. He was already well and favorably known to many of the board of managers. For over forty years he so dominated the development and management of the Hospital that it and its methods were widely known and respected, and everyone called it Kirkbride's for short. This book reads so well that one doesn't easily lay it down. The author has painted a striking portrait of a remarkable man. For good measure , he has with a light and skilful touch, using minutes, letters, and records, written a lot of intimate Philadelphia history. We get also a great respect for the board of managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital. They were good men who could find and support and back up a somewhat advanced and pioneering alienist while he developed methods of care and treatment. The "tradition" and atmosphere of the Pennsylvania Hospital cannot be considered or appreciated separately from the continuing stream of wise men on its board. Ardmore, PennsylvaniaLovett Dewees Vol. 37, Spring 1948 ...