Jesse Montgomery Mosher, M.D., 1864–1922

Jesse Montgomery Mosher established the first U.S. psychiatric ward (1, 2) and inpatient medical and nursing student teaching program (3) in a general hospital. Clinical Professor of Insanity and Nervous Diseases at Albany Medical College, he envisioned Pavilion F as an alternative to the local almshouse and the distant asylum.

In 1895, Mosher went abroad to study hospital care in Vienna, Berlin, and London. He came back determined to establish a psychiatric unit at Albany Hospital that incorporated moral treatment and the latest scientific findings. So unique was Pavilion F that the New York State Commission on Lunacy requested that an exhibit be built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Clifford Beers (4) reported in his influential 1902 book that Pavilion F was the only psychiatric unit in a general hospital in existence at that time. During the first 20 years of its existence under Mosher’s direction, Pavilion F became a model for psychiatric teaching units in general and university hospitals. Units were established in Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Boston, and Edinburgh (3).

From the start, bedside teaching was built into the clerkship. Nurses were central, as was family, to treatment and discharge planning. Transfers between hospital services and consultations were frequent. Monte was loved and admired by students and colleagues during his lifetime. After his death, Pavilion F was renamed the Mosher Memorial Pavilion.

Address reprint requests to Dr. Hassenfeld, 18 Wilshire Dr., Delmar, NY 12054. Image courtesy of Albany Medical College.