Disordered Minds: the First Century of Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1766-1866 (review)

book reviews349 Disordered Minds: the First Century of Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg , Virginia, 1766-1866. By Norman Dain. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1971. Pp. xiv, 207. $5.95.) In writing the history of the Eastern State Hospital in Virginia, Norman Dain, the author of Concepts of Insanity in the United States, has made another significant contribution to American history. Although this small but well-run institution had no profound influence upon the development of psychiatric treatment, in the course of relating its history Dain has given us an excellent insight into the various and changing approaches to treating the mentally ill and to the problems of state operated institutions. He has also struck a proper balance between two myths. Many northerners , equating slavery with the antithesis of morality, cannot conceive of slave owners as having been capable of humanitarianism. In sharp contrast, southerners, compensating for their relatively low economic status, the trauma of losing the war, and a possible guilt feeling about slavery, have created die illusion of an antebellum Soutii populated by a small number of intelligent, cultured aristocratic whites, kindly and paternalistically ministering to the needs of their slaves. The truth is that the antebellum South was largely frontier, but, as Dain shows, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the eastern states there was a small, intelligent, and cultured upper class which dominated government. Unlike the North, where reform and humanitarianism were middle class phenomena, in Virginia it was this upper class which established die first lunatic asylum in the American colonies. The Eastern State Hospital, supported by government funds, opened its doors in 1773 to all regardless of color, class or ability to pay. Medical treatment was typical of the day, widi an emphasis upon bloodletting and purging, but the rigorous therapy was mitigated by an effort to make the patients as comfortable as possible. In part as a result of the slave system, the ratio of attendants to patients was always unusually high. For the first hundred years, three generations of the Gait family ran the hospital and on the whole performed creditably. During the early period diey anticipated die moral treatment by allowing a great deal of freedom and providing ample care for the patients. The last of the Gaits, John Minson Gait, II, was a kindly, reflective, and intellectual individual who was far ahead of his generation in his thoughts on treatment . He recognized tiiat at a certain stage the institution itself became a hindrance to recovery and urged tiiat convalescent patients be sent forth under supervision into the community. The first Gait administrators made no effort to participate in the world of letters, and the last, a reflective intellectual, was a retiring individual whose influence was limited even within his own institution. The result was that neither he nor his predecessors played a significant role in the development of American psychiatric care. Despite this fact, Eastern 350CIVIL WAR HISTORY State was the pioneer hospital in America for the mentally ill, and Dain, drawing upon his broad knowledge, has given us a new perspective on American history. It is an intriguing and well-written book. John Duffy Tulane University Genteel Partisan: Mantón Marble, 1834-1917. By George T. Mcjimsey. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1971. Pp. xi, 333. $10.75.) In 1957 Sister Mary Cortona Phelan published an initial study of the career of Mantón Marble under the title of Mantón Marble of the New York World. For well over three decades the ninety-five volumes of Marble's papers had been available in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress with only piecemeal use by scholars. Her volume was long on the intellectual and cultural aspects of her subject's career, such as his political philosophy and his literary and artistic thoughts and theories. It was short, however, on sophisticated analysis of the realities and details of his involvement in the internal intrigues and problems of both the New York state and National Democratic parties during the years 1862-1892. Devoting more than a decade of study and exhaustive research to the task, Professor Mcjimsey has very largely remedied these deficiencies with an...