John Curwen

John Curwen (1821–1901) was Superintendent of the first public mental hospital in Pennsylvania. He personally knew the thirteen founders of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions of the Insane (AMSAII), now the American Psychiatric Association. He served as secretary-treasurer of the Association for 34 years (1856–1890). Curwen was born at his father’s estate in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. He graduated from Yale University in 1841 and received his medical degree in 1844 from The University of Pennsylvania. He spent several months at the Wills Eye Hospital and then moved to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane where he remained for six years as Assistant Physician to Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. Kirkbride was acknowledged as a leader in AMSAII and with the administration of asylums. He designed plans for the construction of mental hospitals which were adopted throughout the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. Curwen was influenced by Kirkbride’s mentorship throughout his professional life. After a memorial to the Pennsylvania Legislature by Dorothea Dix in 1844, money was appropriated to build the State Hospital for the Insane in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1851, Curwen became superintendent and remained in the post until 1881 when he moved to Warren, Pennsylvania to open an asylum. He stayed there until 1900. His tenure of 57 years in asylums remains unparalleled.