Pennsylvania Express

Our Archivist has been awarded short-term travel grants from the Francis Clark Wood Institute for the History of Medicine at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Committee for Professional and International Affairs of the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland) to enable research into the photographic representation of psychiatric patients using the archival resources of the College's Library.

There should be ample scope for this research in the city of Benjamin Rush, Thomas Kirkbride and Silas Weir Mitchell; and if only the Dorothea Dix Library and Museum (opened as a reading room for the female patients of Pennsylvania's Harrisburg State Hospital, which Dix and Kirkbride co-founded in 1851) had not closed in 2006, it would have been the next stop on our Archivist's itinerary. As matters stand, hopefully there will be enough time for a 'Letter from America' to be written for publication on this blog in due course.