The person in charge of the mental institution was called the medical superintendent. Since there was very little medicine practised in the mental hospital, the superintendent's main role was to attract the confidence and obedience of his patients and to help them recover through the force of moral example. The nineteenth-century asylum was often referred to as a household; the medical superintendent was the "father," disciplining and instructing his "children."
Richard Maurice Bucke, shown here in his office at the London Psychiatric Hospital in 1899, was one of Canada's foremost asylum superintendents. A graduate of McGill University, Bucke practised medicine in Sarnia, Ontario, for several years before taking over the administration of the Hamilton mental hospital in 1876. He moved to the London hospital the next year, where he remained superintendent until his death in 1902. Bucke was a practitioner of moral treatment and non restraint. During his career he served as president of the American Medico-Psychological Association and of the psychological section of the British Medical Association. He was also a good friend of the American poet Walt Whitman and a student of mysticism. His book Cosmic Consciousness (Philadelphia: Innes and Sones, 1901) has enjoyed continuing popularity with readers interested in religious psychology.
Courtesy: Richard Maurice Bucke Collection, D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario
