Luther Vose Bell

He moved to New York to study medicine under his older brother, John, and later received a medical degree from Dartmouth College in 1826.

In 1835, he won the prize with an essay on diet, and in 1836, he was one of three winners for his submission, "How Far are the Means of Exploring the Condition of the Internal Organs to be Considered Useful and Important in the Practice of Medicine?"

Dr. Bell's efforts for a state mental institution in New Hampshire became known to the Trustees of McLean Asylum after the death of the then superintendent.

As the superintendent at McLean, Bell was interested in hospital ventilation, and in 1848 presented the annual address to the Massachusetts Medical Society on this subject.

He continued to write papers about the architecture of asylums, statistics of mental hospitals, the use of restraints on patients, and aspects of medical jurisprudence.

Upon his return, Bell was offered the superintendence position at Butler Asylum but declined and remained at McLean.

He wrote to Dorothea Dix, "Each year … has served to diminish my confidence in an active medical treatment of almost every form of disease of the mind and to increase my reliance on moral means."

When his successor at the McLean Asylum died a year later, the Trustees asked Bell to resume his position until a new superintendent was hired.

With the advent of the U.S. Civil War, Bell applied for a commission as a surgeon in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Eleventh Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers.

Bell later wrote Mead's wife a moving letter now in the National Archives that can be viewed on John Banks' Civil War Blog.

Dr. Isaac Ray, one of the thirteen founders of the AMSAII, published "A Discourse on the Life and Character of Dr. Luther V. Bell," which he read at the annual meeting in 1862.