My Genealogy Hound

DR. DAVID DORRINGTON RICHARDSON, third son of Major George Park and Sarah Ann Richardson, and grandson of George Richardson, of Richmond, Virginia, is a native of that city, born May 11, 1837.

Dr. Richardson’s preparatory education was obtained at Transylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, from the medical department of which he graduated with the degree of M. D., at the termination of his third course of lectures, in February, 1858. He removed to Philadelphia the following spring and organized a school for preparation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine and for the medical staff of the army and navy. This enterprise proved very successful.

Dr. Richardson served three years, from 1858 to 1861, as interne at the Howard and Philadelphia Hospitals, being appointed in the latter year resident physician at the Northern Dispensary, Philadelphia, the institution being under his entire charge. He held this position until December, 1866, when he was appointed superintendent and physician in chief of the Philadelphia Hospital, Department for the Insane.

In 1871 he graduated with the degree of M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1879 he was appointed superintendent of the State Hospital for the Insane, at Warren, Pennsylvania, organizing that institution and placing it on a good working basis, and remaining in charge as superintendent until July, 1881, when he was unanimously recalled to the Philadelphia Hospital, of whose Department for the Insane he had previously had charge, performing the duties in a highly successful and satisfactory manner. He retired from this position in 1886 to engage in private practice.

Dr. Richardson was not to remain thus, however, for any great length of time. His ability as a superintendent of institutions for the insane had now received very general recognition, and in 1889 he was elected the first superintendent of the Delaware State Hospital for the Insane, at Farnhurst, which position he held until October 1, 1893, when he resigned to take charge of the male department of the State Hospital for the Insane, Southeastern District of Pennsylvania, Norristown, in which he has been equally successful, keeping the institution up to the high standard which it had attained under his predecessor, Dr. Robert H. Chase, and making many improvements in the care and treatment of the unfortunates in his charge. Dr. Richardson is a model resident physician, giving personal supervision to every detail of the work of the institution of which he has charge. His many years of successful experience in the management of the insane, has made him an adept in that field of labor which he has chosen for his life-work.

Dr. Richardson’s interest in anatomy made him a frequent visitor to the dissecting room, and in 1858 he was appointed demonstrator in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, of which the late Dr. D. Hayes Agnew was the principal. He continued in that position for a period of eight years. In 1886 he was appointed assistant demonstrator of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Medicine, continuing in that position until 1890.

In 1861 Dr. Richardson published the “Chemical Remembrancer.” In 1876 he prepared for publication “The Old and New Notation of Chemistry Reconciled.” In 1885 he revised for publication his clinical lectures on insanity, delivered from time to time in the Department for the Insane of the Philadelphia Hospital.

Dr. Richardson is a member of the American Medical Association, of the American Medico-Psychological Association, the Philadelphia County Medical Society and the Philadelphia Neurological Society.

Dr. Richardson married, in 1860, Margaret Spear Hancker, of a Pennsylvania family.

The Norristown Hospital for the Insane, with which Dr. Richardson has been identified for so long a time, may be properly noticed in this connection. Its grounds comprise nearly six hundred acres of fertile land finely situated on the banks of Stony creek, just before that stream enters the borough of Norristown. The site commands a very extensive view of the surrounding country, and the institution and its grounds make a highly picturesque scene. It was erected by a commission appointed by Governor John Frederic Hartranft in 1876, one year having been consumed in the selection of a site, and another in the adoption of a suitable plan of hospital buildings. Its construction required nearly two years, the buildings as they then were (many additions and improvements having since been erected), being completed in February, 1880. The plan of the institution is unique, the segregate or detached system being adopted for the different wards. The plan of treatment is rational throughout and entirely opposed to the old theory that the victims of insanity are possessed of an evil spirit. There is an absence of restraint except in the violent ward; patients are kept employed as much as possible; there is a thorough night service, as well as the strictest scrutiny by day; each case is scientifically investigated and treated, as much as may be; and every employee is expected to realize the responsibility resting upon him as a part of a system for improving the condition of the patients in the hospital.

Of late years the institution has been very much overcrowded, its total population, including attendants and other employees, being about twenty-five hundred, the patients being nearly equally divided between the sexes.