Carlos Frederick MacDonald,M.D. (August 29,1845 –May 29,1926) was a psychiatrist,and the chairman of the New York State Commission in Lunacy from 1880 to 1896. [1] He was involved in the design of the first electric chair and examined Leon F. Czolgosz,pronouncing him sane enough to be executed in the electric chair after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. [2] He was President of the American Psychiatric Association from 1913 to 1914. He was an expert witness at the trials of Harry Thaw and Harrison W. Noel. [3]
MacDonald was born in Niles,Ohio,and attended the local schools. At age 16,he enlisted in the Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War participating in several battles including Antietam and Gettysburg. After the war,he spent a year in high school and then entered the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City. He earned his M.D. in 1869. He interned at both the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn,New York City,and at a smallpox hospital during an epidemic for fifteen months.
In 1873 he became superintendent of Flatbush Insane Asylum.
In 1876,he was appointed superintendent of the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Auburn,New York. He then managed the New York State Inebriate Asylum in Binghamton,New York. He remained in both Auburn and Binghamton until 1880.
In 1880,the New York State Legislature passed the State Care Act which provided for the removal of all insane persons from almshouses,county asylums,and workhouses to state mental hospitals. The act established a commission which included a psychiatrist president and two lay members and was charged to be responsible for the state mental hospitals. MacDonald was appointed as the president and held the position until 1896 when he resigned in protest of the commission to carry out its responsibilities which were seen by the state hospital superintendents as a threat to their autonomy.
MacDonald,as a member of the New York Medico-Legal Society,worked on the development of the first electric chair,specifically working with other Society members on the composition and placement of electrode on the condemned prisoner. [4] [5] He was also an attending physician at the execution of William Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6,1890,the first execution using the electric chair. [6]
He was a professor of mental diseases at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College from 1888 to 1896 and a lecturer at the Albany Medical College from 1892 to 1894. In 1906,MacDonald purchased a private mental hospital,Falkirk Sanatorium,in Central Valley,New York,which he operated for many years. In 1906,MacDonald was asked to examine Leon Czolgosz who had assassinated President McKinley. MacDonald found the prisoner sane and attended Czolgosz’s execution in the electric chair. He attended the autopsy and published his findings in a report.
He was president of the American Medico-Psychological Association now the American Psychiatric Association from 1913 to 1914.
MacDonald died on May 29,1926,in Central Valley,New York. [3]
He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was a consulting physician at the Manhattan State Hospital. He was a member of the New York County Medical Society and the New York Medico-Legal Society.
The electric chair is a specialized device employed for carrying out capital punishment through the process of electrocution. During its use,the individual sentenced to death is securely strapped to a specially designed wooden chair and electrocuted via strategically positioned electrodes affixed to the head and leg. This method of execution was conceptualized by Alfred P. Southwick,a dentist based in Buffalo,New York,in 1881. Over the following decade,this execution technique was developed further,aiming to provide a more humane alternative to the conventional forms of execution,particularly hanging. The electric chair was first utilized in 1890 and subsequently became known as a symbol of this method of execution.
Leon F. Czolgosz was an American laborer and anarchist who assassinated president William McKinley on September 6,1901,in Buffalo,New York. The president died on September 14 after his wound became infected. Caught in the act,Czolgosz was tried,convicted,and executed by the State of New York seven weeks later on October 29,1901.
The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane,also known as The Superintendents' Association,was organized in Philadelphia in October,1844 at a meeting of 13 superintendents,making it the first professional medical specialty organization in the U.S.
Charles Rufus Skinner was a U.S. Representative from New York.
William McKinley,the 25th president of the United States,was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in the Temple of Music in Buffalo,New York,on September 6,1901,six months into his second term. He was shaking hands with the public when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley died on September 14 of gangrene caused by the wounds. He was the third American president to be assassinated,following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881.
Edward Charles Spitzka was an eminent late-19th century alienist,neurologist,and anatomist. Dr. Spitzka was the author of the landmark psychiatric manual "Treatise on Insanity,Its Classification,Diagnosis and Treatment" published in 1883. He pioneered studies of the anatomy of the human nervous system.
The lunatic asylum,insane asylum or mental asylum was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Henry Mills Hurd was the first director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and remained in that post for 22 years (1889–1911) following which he was appointed Secretary to the Board of Trustees (1911–1927). He was also the first Professor of Psychiatry at the medical school from its opening in 1893 until 1905.
John E. Gerin M.D. was the physician at Auburn State Prison in Auburn,New York under warden George W. Benham. Gerin performed the autopsy on Leon Czolgosz.
Sir Arthur Mitchell MD LLD was a Scottish doctor involved in the study and care of patients with mental illness. He served on several public commissions,and wrote widely on history and anthropology.
The New York State Hospital Commission is a subdivision of the New York State Department of Health. It was called the State Commission in Lunacy from 1895 to 1912.
Conolly Norman was an Irish alienist,or psychiatrist,of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was the Resident Medical Superintendent of a number of district asylums,most notably Ireland's largest asylum,the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum,now known as St. Brendan's Hospital.
That fellow I was in the Ship with last night,said Buck Mulligan,says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General Paralysis of the Insane.
Margaret Abigail Cleaves,M.D.,was an American physician and scientific writer. She was a pioneer of electrotherapy and brachytherapy,instructor in Electro-Therapeutics New York Post-Graduate Medical School,President of the Women's Medical Society of New York,a Fellow of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association,a member of the SociétéFrancaise d'Electrothérapie,a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine,Editor of Asylum Notes:Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,1891–2,a member of the Medical Society of the County of New York,a member of the American Medical Association,and a member of the New York Electrical Society.
Sir Charles Hubert Bond KBE FRCP was a British psychiatrist and mental health administrator.
Louis Gustave Bouchereau was a French psychiatrist.
Luther Vose Bell,M.D. was one of the thirteen mental hospital superintendents who met in Philadelphia in 1844 to organize the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII),now the American Psychiatric Association,and the first medical specialty society in the United States. He was also Superintendent of the McLean Asylum near Boston,from 1837 to 1855.
Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison is a 1901 silent film produced by the Edison Studios arms of Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a dramatic reenactment of the execution of Leon Czolgosz by electric chair at Auburn Correctional Facility following his 1901 conviction for the assassination of William McKinley. It is considered an important film in the history of cinema.
George Alder Blumer,M.D. (1857-1940) was a physician,a mental hospital administrator,and a journal editor. He was a leader in the provision of humanitarian care for mental hospital patients.
Allan McLane Hamilton was an American psychiatrist,specializing in suicide and the impact of accidents and trauma upon mental health,and in criminal insanity,appearing at several trials.
William Julius Mickle was a Canadian-British medical doctor and medical superintendent of a mental asylum in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. He is known for his 1880 book General Paralysis of the Insane with a 2nd edition in 1886.