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Gallery: Professionalization

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An engraving depicting a long building with six wings of 3 floors and a 4 story central section with a dome and extensive grounds.
Title page, edited by the officers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, Utica.
Dramatic formal portrait of a white man, head and shoulders, front pose, with his signature below.
Formal portrait of a white man seated at a desk with an open book; glasses on forehead; thoughtful pose.
Mid-19th-century compilation portrait of 176 members, all men.
A person is sitting in a chair; his body is immobilized by straps at the shoulders, arms, waist, and feet; a box-like apparatus is used to confine the head. There is a bucket attached beneath the seat.
Formal photographic portrait an older, bearded, white man, seated, wearing glasses.
Lithograph of head of French soldier facing right with brain exposed.

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Formal portrait of a white man seated at a desk with an open book; glasses on forehead; thoughtful pose.

Benjamin Rush M.D.

Benjamin Rush, M.D. (1749–1813) often called “The Father of American Psychiatry,” wrote the first systematic textbook on mental diseases in America entitled, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind, published in Philadelphia in 1812.

Engraved by R. W Dodaon from a painting by Thomas Sully, ca 1840.

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