Pliny Earle (physician)

Pliny Earle II, MD (December 31, 1809 – May 17, 1892) was an American physician, psychiatrist, and poet.

[1] He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1837,[2] then studied in the hospitals of Paris, and visited institutions for the insane in European countries.

In 1840 he became resident physician of the asylum for the insane (now known as Friends Hospital) at Frankford, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia), where he remained two years.

His lectures there were limited to the one course of 1864, owing to his appointment as superintendent and physician-in-chief of the state hospital for the insane in Northampton, Massachusetts.

His introduction of lectures on natural philosophy at the Frankford asylum, in the winter of 1840–1841, was the initiative to a system of combined instruction and entertainment, which has been widely adopted, and is now considered essential to the highest perfection of an institution for the insane.