George Alder Blumer

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. Blumer was born in Sunderland, England. His father was a physician as were his two brothers. His early education in England was followed by schooling in Germany and France. In 1874, he entered the medical school at the University of Edinburgh and remained for one year before he emigrated to the United States. He completed his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and graduated in 1879. After a residency of one year at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, he obtained a post of assistant physician at the New York State Lunatic Asylum (also known as the New York State Inebriate Asylum) in Utica, New York, under the superintendency of John P. Gray, M.D., a prominent psychiatrist. Gray died in 1886 and Blumer became the superintendent of Utica. Blumer instituted many reforms at Utica. He abolished all forms of patient restraints, improved living conditions for patients, placed women nurses on male wards, established occupations and amusements for patients, and succeeded in officially changing the name of the institution to Utica State Hospital. In 1890, the New York State legislature established a State Commission on Lunacy with the director to be responsible for the administration of the state mental hospitals. The Commission of two lay members and a chief psychiatrist began to follow the legislature’s charge but encountered opposition from the state hospital superintendents who, until then, exercised total control of their institutions. It was an ongoing struggle between the Commission and the superintendents, and Blumer took an active role. Blumer’s struggle with the Commission included the Commission’s attempt to take over the leading psychiatric publication in the United States, the American Journal of Insanity. The journal had been established and edited by Amariah Brigham, the first superintendent at Utica and was owned by the hospital. An earlier court ruling confirmed that the hospital owned the journal. Blumer arranged for the American Medico-Psychological Association, now the American Psychiatric Association, to purchase the journal and publish it as the Journal of the American Psychiatric Association, which continues today.