SW_WH1793_Page_021

Were I to select the especial objects which, amidst the great variety that demanded his services, more particularly absorbed his attention, and occupied his deepest consideration, I might dwell upon his close devotion to the interests of the African; the promotion of the leading measures of the Manumission Society; and the enactment of laws for the final abolition of slavery in the state of New York. The education of the blacks, and the esta-blishment of African free schools, were also among the objects of his solicitude. The bettering the condition of the poor, the organization of the Lancasterian free schools, and an improved code of prison discipline, were subjects which engrossed most of his time for many years; and I think you will find many documents among his papers, which evince his successful effortsto further these benevolent purposes. The claims of Mr. Eddy to a lasting consideration will, how-ever, I think, rest mainly on the early begun and long continued zeal and abilities which he exhibited on the subject of insanity, and the unfortunate beings afflicted with that calamity. At a comparatively youthful period of his life, he was appointed to the duties of hospital direction; and he seems at nearly the same period to have turned his attention to the treatment and hospital discipline of those afflicted with mental derangement. Our esta-blishments for the better medical government of lunacy were then very few and imperfect. Pennsylvania had indeed done something—New York nothing. The public spirited governors of the New York Hospital, were induced from urgent represent¬ations made them, to erect a separate edifice on the hospital- grounds for the exclusive benefit of lunatics ; and this institution, which opened its doors in 1808, under the professional direction of the late Dr. Bruce, for a while seemed to answer the benevo-lent intentions of the board of governors. It was, however, ere long, apparent that this city asylum was of too limited a capacity for the accommodation of its numerous applicants; nor was the receptacle itself of the character demanded for the afflicted and valuable beings of all ranks of society who became the inmates of it. Mr. Eddy had read much, and thought much on the sub-jects of mental derangement, on prison and penitentiary discipline, on the structure and economy of mad-houses, and on the domestic and sanative treatment of the insane. His correspondence with