Robert Boyd (1808–1883),[1] was a physician and writer on mental illness, who, in 1870 became president of the Medico-Psychological Association[1] (now the Royal College of Psychiatrists).
He then became proprietor and manager of the Southall Park private asylum, which was destroyed in August 1883 by a fire; he lost his life after re-entering the burning building to rescue thepatients.
[1] He published the annual Reports on the Pauper Lunatics at the St. Marylebone infirmary and the Somerset county asylum, and contributed numerous independent papers to the literature of pathology and psychological medicine.
He contributed no fewer than sixteen papers to the Journal of Mental Science on "Treatment of the Insane Poor", "Diseases of the Nervous System", "Statistics of Pauper Insanity", and cognate subjects, the most important being that on "General Paralysis of the Insane" in the Journal of Mental Science for May and October 1871, the result of 155 post-mortem examinations of persons who had died from that disease in the Somerset county asylum.
He was also the author of three papers on "vital statistics", "Insanity", and "The Pauper Lunacy Laws", published in The Lancet.