John Perdue Gray

Background

John Perdue Gray was born on Aug 6, 1825, in Center County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Peter B. Gray, a farmer and Methodist minister, and Elizabeth Purdue, the daughter of a physician.

Education

Gray's premedical education was obtained at Bellefonte Academy and at Dickinson College (A. M. 1846). He graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1849.

Career

After his graduation, Gray, at once, secured the position of resident physician at Blockley Hospital in Philadelphia under Dr. Benedict, whose protégé he seems to have been.

In 1851, when the latter was made medical superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Gray accompanied him as third assistant physician, was promoted the following year to the second assistant, and finally, when Benedict was forced to resign for personal reasons, he became, in 1853, first assistant and acting medical superintendent at the early age of twenty-eight.

Later, in the same year, he accepted the position of medical superintendent to the Michigan State Lunatic Asylum at Kalamazoo, but in 1854, he was persuaded to return to Utica as full medical superintendent and held this position up to the time of his death.

Gray had been made assistant editor of the American Journal of Insanity in 1852 and two years later he succeeded to the full editorship. In 1874, he was given the chair of psychological medicine and medical jurisprudence in Bellevue Hospital Medical College and in 1876, was appointed to the same chair in the Albany Medical College, resigning both posts in 1882.

When in 1879, he toured Europe he found some of his innovations in use.

In 1882, he was shot in the face by a man later pronounced insane, and although technically the wound was not serious, his health failed from that period and he was obliged to spend much of the last two years of his life in the South or abroad. On resuming his duties his final collapse soon took place.

Achievements

• As a forensic expert and medical witness, Gray was widely known and figured in many prominent cases. He examined for insanity one of the assassins of Lincoln (Payne) and aided the government in the prosecution of Guiteau. His writings were limited to papers on phases of insanity. He was the leading alienist of his day in America and is conceded to have done more than any other one man in bettering the condition of the insane. Regarding the insane man as physically rather than mentally ill, he gave his patients fresh air and exercise and as far as possible abolished mechanical restraint and solitary feeding. He also revolutionized asylum construction, introducing steam heat and forced ventilation. He was made an honorary member of several European societies of alienists and at one time he was president of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane. In a sense, he was a medical martyr.

Views

Gray paid much attention to the microscopic study of the brain of the insane and his asylum became a sort of postgraduate school for the training of alienists.

Connections

On September 6, 1854, Gray was married to Mary B. Wetmore, the daughter of Edmund A. Wetmore of Utica.

Father:

Peter B. Gray

Mother:

Elizabeth Purdue

Wife:

Mary B. Wetmore