[1] It was chartered to focus "primarily on the administration of hospitals and how that affected the care of patients", as opposed to conducting research or promoting the profession.
[2] At the meeting they passed the first proposition of the new organization: "It is the unanimous sense of this convention that the attempt to abandon entirely the use of all means of personal restraint is not sanctioned by the true interests of the insane.
They included:[4] The American Journal of Insanity (AJI) was first published in June, 1844, by Amariah Brigham, Superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica.
He was said to have been the author of the entire first issue, which included six articles, a list of existing mental asylums in the U.S., and notes on insanity from France.
The American Neurological Association, organized in 1875, grew out of the Civil War experiences of physicians who had been involved in caring for soldiers with traumatic injuries of the brain and nerves.
[5] In 1894, to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding, The Superintendents' Association invited Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a prominent Philadelphia neurologist to address the annual meeting.
He said that they had isolated themselves from medicine and they sought no new scientific information through their work, their medical records were inadequate, and their educational efforts among the profession were minimal.