Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1285

WOODWARD practice in Worcester. For thirty years he devoted himself to his profession, seeing patients even on the very day of his sudden death, December 30, 1885, at the age of sixty-six.

He was a member of the local and state medical societies and during the war of 1861–65 was examining surgeon for volunteers. From 1863 to 1866 he was city physician and again in 1877 he held this position, and from 1871 to 1880 visiting surgeon to the City Hospital. In natural history and botany he was always greatly interested and was one of the founders and for many years president of the Worcester Natural History Society. Much of his spare time was spent in his garden, and any wild flower of the neighborhood of Worcester he did not know was rare indeed.

His son Lemuel F. Woodward became a surgeon in Worcester.



Woodward, Samuel Bayard (1787–1850)

Samuel B. Woodward, alienist and advocate of more humane methods in the treatment of the insane, was the son of Dr. Samuel Woodward of Torringford, Conn., where he was born June 10, 1787, and he was a descendant of Henry Woodward, himself a physician, who emigrated from England in 1635, and settled in Dorchester. Massachusetts, afterwards removing to Northampton. Samuel studied medicine with his father and received a license to practise from the Connecticut Medical Society in 1809. In 1810 he removed to Wethersfield, where he remained in active practice until 1832, receiving the honorary degree of M. D. from Yale College in 1822, and being for the last five years of his residence physician to the Connecticut State Prison. He was one of the "examiners" of the Yale Medical School and was offered a position on the faculty, but declined.

His observation of insane convicts, and his knowledge of the miserable existence eked out by the many helpless lunatics and idiots in the various prisons and almshouses of the state, caused trim to take an active part in efforts to provide adequate care for these unfortunates, and it is said that he travelled all over the State in his "gig" urging the establishment of what was later known as the Hartford Retreat for the Insane. In 1880 he was elected to the Connecticut State senate in furtherance of this object, and after the establishment of the "Retreat" was made one of the "visitors" and a director of that institution.

His interest in the subject became by these activities so well known, that, on the advice of (q.v.), superintendent of the Retreat, he was in 1832 chosen by the trustees of the new hospital in Worcester, of which Horace Mann was the chairman, to take charge of that institution. He remained here as superintendent until 1846, when, broken in health, he resigned and removed to Northampton, where he died as the result of the rupture of an aortic aneurysm, four years later, Jan. 3, 1850, at the age of sixty-three.

The Hospital at Worcester was the first hospital in the State, and, indeed, one of the first in the country built to care for the indigent insane. Established, as the Act read, to care for those "furiously mad," its early patients were truly a select class, gathered from almshouses and prisons, where many of them had remained uncared for during long periods of time. So great was the improvement in these almost hopeless cases, some of whom had been chained for years, others lying naked on straw in unheated rooms, that an enthusiast, like Dr. Woodward, became convinced that practically all insane patients could be cured, if properly cared for, and his reports show an optimism which further experience proved to be too far reaching.

Occupation for institution inmates, the value of which is so thoroughly recognized at the present time, was instituted by him in 1832. His wife taught classes in sewing and knitting, and the spinning wheels used at the time are in the attic of the old building, which is—in 1916—still in use. His methods and manner of control met with general approval.

In 1834, and again in 1840, he was offered the superintendency of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane.

In 1840 he was urged to become a candidate for superintendency of the McLean Asylum, and in 1842, the Trustees of the Asylum planned for Utica, N. Y., offered to build it under his supervision, if he would accept the charge of it when completed. All these offers were declined, although he went to Utica, no small journey in those days, to look over the ground.

While in Worcester, he founded, and was the first president, of the Association of American Insane Hospital Superintendents. With (q.v.) he carried on a long correspondence urging the establishment of what became the Massachusetts School for