Henry Mills Hurd (May 3, 1843 – July 19, 1927)[1] 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).

At age fourteen, he entered Knox College but soon moved to the University of Michigan, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1863.

Johns Hopkins, a Quaker philanthropist in Baltimore, died in 1873, leaving his fortune for the building of a hospital and medical school, stipulating that the two facilities must work together and be devoted to scientific observation, experiment, and personal observation; a new approach to medical training and patient care.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School (1893) quickly assumed a leadership role in American medicine.

Hurd was Editor of Publications, producing seventy-two issues of the Bulletin (1899–1906) and sixteen volumes of the Reports.

Hurd will be especially remembered for his Editorship of the monumental four-volume work titled Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada (1916).

The work was undertaken at the request of the American Medico-Psychological Association by a committee of six asylum superintendents with Hurd as Editor in Chief.

At the dedication of Hurd Hall in 1932, an addition to the hospital, Judge Henry Harlan, a trustee, said of Hurd, “his statesmanship, tact, kindness, and breadth of vision; his harmonizing influence and generous appreciation and admiration created between Hospital and University a spirit of cooperation and admiration for achievements of the other and marked the relationship of the hospital and medical school.” An associate said of Hurd, “If he had any faults, I’ve forgotten them”.